Marketing For Children Should Be Regulated

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.

In today’s media obsessed society, youth is greatly influenced by advertising. For example, Marketing to kids gets more savvy with technologies is how they ,“Online games like Webkinz show ads on the site draw youth to buy the product or just to look at it for ‘money’”. Because this tactic works, the ads are an excellent at make youth to talk about this and be annoyed. In Facts about Marketing to Children, it says, “Children pack 8.5 hours of media a day’, is what the Facts about Marketing to Children says.” Because children are on the media so much it is easy for marketers to advertise and get children to buy the product. “ Anne Lappe says that when her daughter grows up, and goes to a movie, the character might have a soda or fast food.”

One of the most successful marketers is quoted in the article “Get kids to nag their parents and nag them well”(260). In the initial few sections, he discussed the present time effects of the advertising on youngsters. Through this he contend that, previously, there weren't numerous child based marketing organizations that concentrated exclusively with respect to children and have their own kids' divisions, while now, they have huge amounts of organizations that makes a whole advertising division for the

“Congress should ban advertising that preys upon children, it should stop subsidizing dead-end jobs, it should pass tougher food safety laws, it should protect American workers from serious harm, it should fight against dangerous concentrations of economic power (Schlosser). People must wonder how is it that a fast food company has so much customers. Advertising is the answer. The power advertisers have to be able to influence so many people 's decisions and affect people’s lives especially the lives of young children is incredible. Advertisers know just who to target and they research how too. In Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation, Schlosser explains to the readers how advertisers use techniques to draw in customers. A technique used is the “cradle-to-grave” which focuses on children to make them lifelong consumers. Like many researcher, Schlosser, has found that advertising to children when they are younger makes them be loyal to the company, and a child 's “brand loyalty” may begin as early as the age of two (43). Fast food advertising reaches out and harms families everywhere. This is why it is crucial that the people to make changes in their lives and change the way fast food is affected us.

The author is set out to target companies such as the fast food industry and its affiliation with child targeted advertisement. The article begins by

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.

Eric Schlosser’s essay, “Kid Kustomers,” concludes and makes several strong points about the marketing on children. He starts his essay with a brief comparison that “twenty-five years ago, only a handful of American companies directed their marketing at children,” whereas today, “children are being targeted by phone companies, oil companies, and automobile companies…” He emphasizes and stresses the importance of having “Kid Kustomers,” because one important marketing strategy is to aim to “increase not just current, but also future, consumption.” Schlosser learns that ad agencies target children because they make up a majority of their sales. Throughout the essay, Schlosser not only gives marketing tips but also discusses the 7 different types

Companies are continuously in search of innovative marketing techniques by encouragingly establishing individuals to purchase their advertised products. As intelligent as marketing companies are, they are indeed aware of the fact that adults are more likely to watch an advertisement and detect why they should or should not purchase such product. In such instances where the company cannot reach the focus of an adult, parent, or parental figure, marketers will target young children and teens in their advertising campaigns. Advertising campaigns targeting the youth have significantly impacted the ethical consideration in the children’s market through media, ethics, as well as food advertising to children.

Since the dawn of radio, large corporations have exploited this vulnerability by spending large amounts of money on advertisements aimed at convincing youths and teenagers that they need their products in order to be happy. When successful, these corporations unrealistic expectations of the value of consumer products, as they convince children they will find happiness through obtaining the latest Power Ranger action figure or eating a Big Mac. The graph (Source A) demonstrates how media is targeted at various types of audiences segmented by age, like kids, teens, and adults. It is particularly telling that commercial advertisements about foods are particularly geared towards children. This may be because children are the most impressionable in this area, or this may be because children at that age develop lifelong eating habits. One would expect children to have too little purchasing power to make their own food choices, Benady suggests a possible rationale for this targeting: children have a substantial “pester power” to pressure their

For the past thirty years, marketing companies and other commercial entities have used lawsuits to win more expansive First Amendment protections for commercial speech including the regulation of advertising to children. Advancements in digital technology have allowed marketers to find more direct and personalized gateways to reach young audiences through advertising, side-stepping the authority of adults and taking advantage of children’s vulnerability. While food corporations might argue that it is ultimately the targeted audience who assesses a product and therefore no regulation should be permitted, the government needs to regulate how far commercial speech can stretch under the First Amendment in order to protect the health and safety

Marketing towards children should have some form of restriction. A number of ethical perspectives confirms this fact, which is well elucidated in Stephanie Clifford's "A Fine Line When Ads and Children Mix" which ran in the New York Times. The basic premise for why there needs to be restrictions on advertising aimed towards children is that children do not have the cognitive prowess or development to distinguish between clever marketing and items of consumption that they actually need. This fact holds true not only for food items, but for other items including toys and clothing as well. From a deontological perspective, then, it is inherently wrong or immoral to take advantage of someone, which is what children's advertising is essentially doing. And from a consequentialist perspective, advertising towards children can produce harmful effects. Children lack temperance, and the steady influx of promotional material directed towards them has the proclivity to make them incontinent from a variety of perspectives including that involving the food they eat, to the toys they play with. These unhealthy outcomes would make a consequentialist attempt to regulate advertising towards children.

There are some specific and real problems that advertising can cause upon children (William A. Ramsey). Fast-food restaurant advertising it’s influencing our children to be obese. Childhood obesity around the world is causing worries, especially detrimental as its effect carries on into parenthood. The ratio of children 's who are overweight has approximately tripled in the same period, reaching fourteen percent (Center for disease control

With an exuberant title of SIZZZZLE, this article in the September 2006 edition in the issue 393 of the Internationalist Magazine, enunciates on the idea of advertising companies targeting children and young people to produce a higher income. Quoting through a variety of renowned child psychologists and various marketing educators, Jonathan Williams illustrates advertising as exploiting an individual’s insecurities, creating false needs and offering counterfeit solutions; hence fostering dissatisfaction that leads to consumption. Williams states that children are particularly vulnerable to this type of manipulation. Manipulating adolescents into a consumer lifestyle at such a young age has devastating consequences for the environment

In 1983, companies spent $100 million marketing to kids. Today, they 're spending nearly $17 billion annually. That 's more than double what it was in 1992 (Lagorio, 2007). Lawlor and Prothero (2002) cited recent numbers for the spending influence of children up to twelve years in the United States. These children controlled spending of $28 billion in 2000 from their own allowances and earnings, and also they influenced $250 billion of family spending. (Oates, Blades and Gunter, 2003, pg.401). In this paper, it will being explaining what social problems are caused when children are marketed to and what we can do to stop it. I argue that marketing to children is a problem because it causes children to be obese from food commercials and ads, they have a lot of buying power, which influences parents, they have too much access to media, which has a lot of commercials or ads and how children are learning from commercials and ads like being violence, dressing an older teen etc. In the first part for each paragraph it will show an in text citation, then I will be explaining that citation, put an in text citations of how to stop it and I will explain the citation.

Advertising today focuses on specific targeted demographic groups. There is a direct focus on marketing products to young consumers. This age group sees the commercials, but does not really understand the directed message. This can have an adverse effect on the way children interpret and understand the message being presented to them. 'The average American child sees more than 40,000 commercials a year, and advertisers spend more than $12 billion annually marketing to them?double the amount of 10 years ago.' (APA-1) Children watching television are exposed to every channel running commercials that are sending out a mature message to an immature audience. There needs to be something done to