Is It Too Much?

In today’s market driven society children can’t escape ads and their marketers, even their schools are filled with the advertiser’s products distracting the youth from learning.

No matter where children are or what they are doing they’ll always find some sort of advertisements. It can be when their casually watching television, reading a magazine or just playing games on their computer. Advertisements are different forms of communication whose purpose is to make their product known to the public. Marketers aren’t partial to certain people; they target anyone and every age group, but recently there has been an upsurge of advertisements aimed towards children. In Eric Schlosser’s article, Kid Kustomers, he demonstrates how child advertising has boomed by the tactics marketers use to get children to want and demand certain companies’ products.

Unfortunately, advertising is sending our country into a quick downward spiral, doing an immense amount of harm and little good. Companies pay millions of dollars each year, in hopes to successfully pull the wool over our eyes and get their product sold. The dishonesty is leaving the citizens of this country with nothing to gain. The biggest problem with advertising is that the majority of it is alarmingly misleading. Advertisements convey an unrealistic view of a particular product. Companies go to extraordinary lengths to persuade consumers to indulge in unnecessary luxuries. Once again, the consumer falls victim to their tricks and

The film, “Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood” takes a closer look at how the negative impact advertising and marketing is having on the children who are the main targeted audience especially because they are easy to manipulate. The United States is a country that cares a lot about consumers. People are around advertisement and marketing all the time in every place they go. In fact, people live to buy, people need and want things constantly and it will never stop. In the American economy consumerism may be a leading role. Most would say the advertisements are a way to promote information about services and products, but in most cases, it involves deception and manipulation. For years now consumerism has been the trademark of the American way of life and now that society has embraced it so fully, it seems that even children are being born and raised with the same mindset. The kids influence their parents buying decicions and they’re the adult consumers of the future.Our bank account might be affected by advertisement, but many adults don’t realize the ways are brain are affected by it. Parents have to teach their kids that many of the things advertise are not good, by not always buying what their kids want. Government regulations need to put a stop to corporations that live, breathe and sell the idea of consumerism to children.

In the article, Every nook & nanny: the dangerous spread of commercialized culture, written by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor, the authors argue how corporations have had great influence on schools, television, movies, internet and other forms of media culture through advertising. Prior to 1989, advertising was not accepted in schools. Chris Whittle convinced schools to accept adverting by offering to loan TV sets providing children to view 10 minutes a day of news, banter and at least two minutes of advertisements through Channel One. Food and beverage companies soon entered the schools with ‘sponsored educational materials’ fed in their TV advertisements to the mass audience. Companies began ‘Ad creep’ because

Media impacts our lives everyday. The average 14-to-28 year-old will be exposed to about 3,000 ads every day. Ben Franklin once said that nothing is certain is this life except death and taxes. I believe it is now safe to assume we can add advertisements to that list now. We are literally bombarded with them. After seeing all the advertisements I am led to believe that they are the most carefully constructed of all human communication, being it the most expensive too. In 2004, according to www.answers.com, advertisement was in excess of $450 billion in the United States alone. It is not our fault though that these advertisements display messages that we cannot perceive. When we see an ad, our conscious mind will filter out the things it cannot deal with and make an acceptable idea or image that is made conscious. This is

Advertisements are everywhere. They are a major part of modern day society. Whether it be a television commercial, an internet banner, or a billboard, advertisements influence people of all ages, but they affect a certain age group much more than others. Children ranging from toddlers to teenagers are exposed to thousands upon thousands of advertisements each year. Some of these advertisements are damaging to children, while others are a positive influence. Advertisements can either be used as a tool or a weapon. Food advertisements and manipulation strategies are both positive and negative, and how companies use them decides whether or not marketing to children is ethical.

Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend a whopping 44.5 hours in front of media sources that are possibly displaying these ads. Research has shown that children less than age 8 cannot tell that the advertisements are merely trying to be persuasive. Children under age 6 cannot even tell the difference between an advertisement and a program. Yet

“There are over 250 billion advertisements released to the public every year with the average person seeing over 3000 ads every single day” (Kilbourne). This is an astronomical amount of information for anyone to process in a week let alone in one day. This is a prime example of Capitalism at it’s finest. Controlling the consumer in every aspect of their lives. Jean Kilbourne also talks about how “Only 8 percent of an advertisement is actually processed by the conscious mind, with the other 92 percent being soaked up by the subconscious” (Kilbourne). Thinking about those numbers really brings into perspective how much we are truly influenced by media

I see advertisement everyday of my life. I see advertisement in unusual places like the trays attached to the seats of airplanes or even in a place I would commonly consider as private like bathrooms. I would say my childhood

Advertising, we are exposed to it every day, but no one is targeted by ads more than children. Whether it’s in schools, online, or out in the real world, kids are exposed to and targeted by ads each and every day; and when you find out what advertisers really are and what they do, you will be shocked.

I have chosen sources from the media, literature and interviews for supporting the essays. The topic “The power of advertising: its effects on Children”

Ruskin and Schor present the corruption of advertising on our children and in our daily subconscious (and conscious) lives in a compelling argument one can rally behind. It is important to think about the writer’s ideas of “advertising diminishing our sense of general well-being” because it affects each individual in society as well as society as a whole. (Ruskin and Schor, 491). It is affecting the self esteem of young women with unrealistic advertising on body image. It is affecting children who have purchasing power up to billions of dollars. Ruskin and Schor argue that it is even affecting government and state as crony capitalism comes into play. The authors introduce numerous examples in our community and nation of examples of commercialism

Due to the amount of advertisements a person sees every day, almost everywhere, the United States law does not regulate it. France and the United Kingdom have increased “regulation of advertising practices” (O’Neil, 3). This includes “digital manipulation of photographs in advertisements that can mislead consumers about product performance. Self-regulatory bodies in both countries have pushed to ban cosmetic advertisements for misleading consumers in this way” (O’Neil, 3). However due to the first amendment, - the right to freedom of speech – the U.S. lacks stronger regulations juxtapose France and the United Kingdom.

The government should exercise more control and limits on advertising that is aimed at children. Children are the leaders of the future and the children watch on average two or more hours of television a day. These are children’s most formative years. When children form ideas that prove to be substance of how they will think as adults.