Television has a tremendous impact on the American culture. Even though television has positive effects, the negative effects of television outweigh the positive effects. The majority of television watched is through advertisements. Television advertisements have a great impact on Americans, especially the youth. In fact, a young person views 40,000 television advertisements per year (Committee on Communications). Concerning a child’s developing cognition and social pressures, television advertisements negatively impact American youth in the areas of behavior, health, and ethics. A young child’s cognitive abilities are not as developed compared to adults. Research shows that a child, before the age of eight, does not have discernment …show more content…
Most advertisements’ purpose is to try to sell a product. This exposure to commercialism can lead the child to adopt a materialistic viewpoint. The more the child sees, the more the child will want. This may be beneficial for the seller, but this may be harmful for the child. This wanting may eventually lead to dissatisfaction of what they already have and to covet what others have. “Those expecting material possessions to bring happiness may in fact experience satisfaction from their goods for a time, but through adaptation processes dissatisfaction will eventually reassert itself” (Richins). Adolescents who are working through self-consciousness and self-doubt may “rely on consumption symbols for self-expression and self-worth and to manifest materialism to a greater extent than adults” (Pechmann). Tension in families may arise, as well, for researchers “have found that parent–child conflicts occur commonly when parents deny their children's product purchase requests that were precipitated by advertising” (APA).
Television advertisements can impact a child’s health. The impact not only effects their physical health but also effects their mental health. For physical health, commercials have been linked to obesity. “Studies have documented that a high percentage of advertisements targeting children feature candy, fast foods, and snacks and that exposure to such advertising increases consumption of these products” (APA). For the majority of ads, the
Some children’s families do not have the finances to purchase healthy foods, so they buy what they can afford which is fast food and junk. Markets have lowered their prices for the unhealthy food making it easier for consumers to buy and harder to resist when it fits in the budget. Also, television has become a big part of the youth’s extra-curricular activities. Children don’t spend most of their time outside playing anymore, now they watch TV for more than seven hours. A recent literature review by Kaiser Family Foundation highlighted a number of studies that suggested that advertising influenced dietary and other food choices in children (M. Dehghan, N. Akhtar-Danesh and A. Merchant). While watching TV for hours on end, they will see advertising for fast food restaurants and junk food. Unhealthy foods are advertised on TV to target children and adolescents. TV viewing is a contributing factor to childhood obesity because it may take away from the time children spend in physical activities. Watching TV leads to increase calorie intake through snacking and eating meals in front of the TV. Plus influence children to make unhealthy food choices through exposure to food advertisements that are unhealthy.
In the article “TV’s Negative Influence on Kids Reaffirmed” by Jeffrey M. McCall, he addresses the issue of how TV has a negative influence on children. McCall states that young children and toddler’s cognitive ability does not develop as well when they have television in the background while they are playing. McCall also argues that TV has a very influential role in the teen pregnancy rate and how early teens become sexually active. To further prove his point, McCall proclaims that children and teens that are exposed to too much Television and video games become socially awkward and have trouble interacting in society. McCall also says that the networks are rating their own programs carelessly which is leading to shows that should be blocked
In fact, a recent study on materialism said, “children who watch a lot of commercials attach more value to money and things,” and, “...believe that happiness can be bought”(Opree). Children are more susceptible to being influenced by the advertisements they see. Therefore, advertisements aimed at adolescents often feature expensive toys and brands that appeal to children and cause them to want to purchase the items. The children also examine how delighted the people in the advertisements look with the products, and that makes them believe that they must buy their happiness. Another study shows that people will, “...establish buying habits they will carry into adulthood”(Day, Nancy). Basically, when children identify advertisements for popular items, they will begin to purchase the items and become loyal to those brands. These could be expensive brands that will influence their other purchases, making them think that if one item they purchase is expensive, then their other purchases must be expensive as well. Wanting their lives to be on the level of the expensive brands they own, consumers are becoming more and more materialistic.
Association, kids often do make food choices based on what they see on television. Doctors who study kids have noticed that food advertised is very powerful” (39). In order to prove that idea, the author adds that children and teens who watch more than two hours of television daily are more likely to be overweight than those who do not. Due to the many fast food restaurants and advertisements available to Americans, the realization that their food is unhealthy does not occur. The United States is aware of the consequences that come along with obesity, yet rarely ever are there advertisements promoting a healthy lifestyle. It is uncommon that an overweight person is shown eating a restaurant’s food in their commercial. It will give off the wrong
Every time his/ her child would see these commercial they would beg, cry and plead for the things that they saw. The child would even bang his head against the wall in order to get what he saw on television. The parent had to reduce the amount of television the child watched and she began to take the child to the park more often. There was a study done proving that the degree to which children think that things make people happy. One psychologist in California calls this "narcissistic wounding” the result is an epidemic of materialistic values among children due to television
Study 1 demonstrates that positive affect toward ads in childhood creates the relationship between childhood advertising exposure and biased evaluations of products associated with childhood advertising. Study 2 shows a stronger bias when participants are exposed to childhood advertising cues relative to childhood consumption cues. Studies 3 and 4 show that even when there is high motivation to correct bias, there is always that lingering positive attitude towards the childhood ad that will affect product evaluations. This study will be beneficial for the final project because it expresses how important an impression on an ad is during childhood. All four of the studies help support that opinions on products do follow you from childhood into adulthood. This helps show why advertising to children is so important to
Obesity in children, who are exposed to advertising of unhealthy foods and sugar-sweetened beverages through the media. Television advertising has affected children due to their lack of nutritional knowledge and inexperience in making healthy food choices. The media which affects childhood obesity is one of the major public health issues that our country faces , due to increase weight gain and physical inactivity in children. According to the Center for Disease Prevention, overweight children are associated with a higher risk of contracting heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and many other physiological issues. If untreated, overweight children are most likely to develop obesity as adults (CDC, n.d). Overweight children spend more of their time
The advertisement industry has come a long way over the years. Television ad 's used to be based primarily on newspapers and magazines but with the occurrence of growing technology, has moved on to things such as radio, television and the internet. In this day and age, advertisement techniques can be considered almost predatory in nature targeting people who are interested in new forms of technology, gaming, clothing and even food. It has become easier for a products influence to make its way into people 's homes. Even though television advertisements can be incredibly powerful tools, they cannot be held entirely accountable for childhood obesity because other factors may affect the childhood obesity epidemic, such as household environment, psychological issues, sleep disturbances or even actions taken by the mother while she was pregnant.
Certain consumer behaviors adopted by children affect their mental and physical health. Studies have shown that there is a link between what children see in advertisements and the lifestyle choices they make. Studies also showed that children who viewed advertisements showing healthy eating were more likely to engage in healthy eating habits (Carter and Maria). There are large amounts of advertisements for foods and drinks high in fat and sugar. Many studies show that there is a link between childhood obesity and advertising. There has been a rise in childhood obesity in the past few years and many believe, and have evidence to support, that it is partly because of unregulated advertisements aimed towards children. The health of a child is very important childhood obesity is something to be concerned about. The definition of childhood obesity is: having a body mass index above the normal range for age and sex in children. The definition of childhood obesity may not sound very frightening, but childhood obesity has many detrimental effects and associated diseases and disorders that extend into adulthood (Dill and Moglia). Some of these include: metabolic syndrome, high insulin levels, high blood pressure, abnormal lipid levels, atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Other than physical syndromes, childhood obesity also affects children mentally. Children with childhood obesity often have poor body image, low self-esteem, social isolation, recurrent anger, clinical
This may be true, but one of the biggest teachers in my life was my dad. Anytime I saw or heard a commercial for something attractive my dad would ask me if buying it was something that I needed or would be worth the money. Nine times out of ten the answer was no. Parents need to help children understand advertising. Our children are the future of this nation, and if they don't learn from a young age how to disipline themselves from implusive buying our economy will
About a third of children in the U.S. are considered overweight or obese, and researchers believe television advertising is a significant contributing factor (4). Exposure to television advertising is basically universal and the ads present foods as desirable and attractive. Children have been shown to be far more receptive to television advertising messages than classroom lessons (3). It leaves a harder lasting impression on them because the food products are presented in a cool, fun way that attracts children. Most of the time, children would pick foods that they may not even like, simply because they think it’s the cool thing to eat and once a kid gets his mind set on what they want, it is very hard to steer them away from wanting it. Television ads for foods geared toward children are usually fun, and bright with animations and lots of cool characters that the children can relate to. This directly influences the child’s food preference and unfortunately most of these ads are for processed, unhealthy food products like cereals, snacks, fast food, and soft drinks. In the U.S., there are few restrictions on food ads, but that's not the case in the U.K., where junk food can't be marketed on children's television (4).
Alcohol. Obesity. Violence. For kids today in the United States, these are only a few of the problems linked to the child-targeted mass media, especially the multi- million dollar business—television commercials in children’s programming. With the disappearance of a TV-free environment, a typical American kid sees about 40,000 television advertisements each year, most of which are for soda, candy, video games, fast food and their free toys. In order to collect some information, I sat down on a Saturday morning on July 16, 2004, and recorded several kids’ TV ads for further analysis. Needless to say, the results were quite shocking—aside from the obvious, I also noticed that most ads featured active and aggressive boys while
Food advertisements, if focused at the right people and in the right places, are a complete success. These features, some of which are commercials, seduce society into buying food that we necessarily do not need. Many advertisement companies, especially those about food, are directed to children because they know that if you grab the kids you have their parents. While brands are using fun cartoons like “Trix Rabbit” and “Toucan Sam” (Green, 2007, p. 49) supermarkets are taking these items and placing them right in front of the children, at their level, advertising the “Fun foods” (Elliot, 2008, p. 259-273). They do this so the kids will use their, “pester power” (Scholsser, n.d., p. 2) to get what they want. A series of studies have been performed on children and television advertisements. An article states, “These studies have generally linked children's television viewing to negative health effects” (Korr, 2008, p. 451). Amongst these negative effects is a higher level of childhood obesity (p. 451). Similarly, in another study performed by a group of researchers, kids were asked to explain the television commercials that they remembered the best. The answers given were then compared with their diets. Interestingly, the items those children remembered best, chips, sweets, and sodas were a huge part of what they ate (Hitching & Moynihan, 1998, p. 511-517). However, some authors argue that television producer’s, even though their
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 is considered a paid communication through a non-personal medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled. Variations include publicity, public relations, product placement, sponsorship, time shifted advertising, underwriting, and sales promotion. Every major medium is used to deliver these messages such as the television, radio, movies, magazines, newspapers, the internet, and billboards. Advertisements can also be seen on the seats of grocery carts, on the walls of an airport walkway, and the sides of buses, or heard in telephone hold messages or in-store PA systems nearly anywhere a visual or audible communication can be placed. (Wikipedia, 2006) Advertising can be