The App Generation Research Paper

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

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

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

If you take notice of the clothing that the people in these advertisements are wearing than you will notice that their physical appearances are also contributing to the message that the advertisement is trying to convey. The images will make us look at ourselves and compare our physical appearances to theirs, which adds on to the guilt factor that the company is trying to make us feel. Everything that is going on in the image is adding on to the emotions that they want us to feel. The appearance of the people especially makes us feel that way. The writing on the image does that as well, it compares the cost of our luxuries and the cost of their necessities to live and puts It right there in front of our eyes.

Advertisements are a part of our everyday lives and we encounter thousands every day on television, in newspapers, on the radio, on the internet. Advertisements use three basic tricks to persuade the people as listed by Aristotle: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. Ethos is an appeal to ethics, and it is used to convince the viewer of the credibility. Pathos is an appeal to emotion and is used to convince the viewer by creating an emotional response. Logos is an appeal to logic and is used to persuade the viewer by logic. An advertisement may use one, two or a combination of all three. They have the power to persuade us into buying things that we might or might not want. Not every advertisement aims at materialistic things. Some advertisements want to educate us on a persistent issue, some might want to raise awareness and even aid funding, some try to remind us of important events that might be taking place in our county. The advertising agencies try to be as creative as possible in order to grab utmost attention. But sometimes, in doing so, they end up hurting sentiments of a community of people. I will discuss one such advertisement in my journal below.

When I was a kid in school, I was told that there were the basic things that you needed like clothes and food and there were the things that you maybe want but don’t really need. Advertisements do not have any effects on what we need. We don’t watch and add about how we need to eat food to stay alive; we have hunger for that. However, Advertisements greatly affect what we want.

People are easily influenced and made to feel unhappy by these advertisers, so they feel the need to purchase more products without becoming much happier after the purchase, causing you to continue to buy in search of happiness (McKevitt 144). Roberts explains that “the process of moving ahead materially without any real gain in satisfaction is often called ‘the treadmill of consumption’,” he continues stating that the treadmill is a blocking us from achieving this happiness because we automatically take good things for granted (124). The family Turow describes is perfect evidence to support that the treadmill is a blockade; the family continues to purchase things in search for becoming happy, but they never seem to become happier, despite the advertisements saying they will be (229). Without the growth and influence of advertisements, most of today’s society would only be purchasing items that they can afford and need, not what they are told they want. Maslow’s hierarchy, again, explains this clearly, nowhere on the pyramid is there a “want” there is only “needs” (McKevitt 147). Because of advertisers, the consumption treadmill continues and consumers will never reach

In an average day, an American is exposed to over 3000 advertisements, (Kilbourne). Whether they want to admit it or not, they are drawn toward them. A common scheme of the advertisers is to allow the consumer to “picture the new them.” Whether this be a wealthier them, a skinner them, or a prettier them, they gear there product towards every person and want everyone be able to connect with the advertisement and picture the “new them.” American Idol, Nutrisystem, and The Biggest Loser, the lottery, and many other “products” promote that anyone has the chance to be famous, fit, or fortunate. The successes from these “products” present themselves as they were before, with the sob story that hopefully touches a nerve with

have taken over every form of social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and

What image does one keep in the back of their mind about what the ‘should’ look like or the life they that should live? Where do these images come from? Do they affect us? Every day we sprint through our day, surrounded by the images of modern advertisment. These images pass us by in a blur and essentially brainwash us into a certain standard of image or goal of living. For instance, ads that feature men feature them as masculine and powerful whereas ads that feature women not only sexualize them, but take away their power. Ads like this have been receiving the attention of the public since the early 1900’s and are seen by thousands and millions of people on a daily basis. Consequently, these images have adverse affects on society such as decreasing

The message in many advertising campaigns is that we can find true happiness in our possessions, by fitting in, by being ‘cool’, by achieving ‘perfection’ or by having particular experiences. What is wrong with these

Since advertising must create new demand, it must also continually produce unsatisfied costumers. Those customers are more likely to look for products to fulfill their happiness, even though they do not reach that point. Mander writes that “the goal of all advertising is discontent,…an internal scarcity of contentment.” Advertising plays on our fears, insecurities, and anxieties, always reminding us that our lives could be better only if we buy this or that. The purpose is to make us slaves of commercials, and as slaves, do as they please. This is the reason for its existences,

Berger believes that the “mystification” of images narrows the point of view of individuals and that critics use their status to impose their opinions (Berger 147). In a way, when we view an advertisement we mystify the image, because as individuals have seen many advertisements, we impose the meaning that there is no meaning besides that of money. We see nothing behind the meaning of monetary gain, and we dismiss any other meaning that could be embedded in the photo because, with our experience we view advertisements as a way to make money and nothing more. We get this view because at one point in time within the past few decades, someone said that advertisements we a lie, that everything within them are fake and they are simply used to trick us into buying things we don’t need. All that isn’t necessarily false, but that bad reputation leads people to disguise the beauty in which advertisements truly hold.

Communication used to be relatively limited. At one point, a person could only talk to somebody else in person or send them a written letter. Nowadays, somebody can send somebody else a moving picture with words written on top of it asking them a question, and this message might only be viewable within a certain amount of time, and the message might be one part of many other messages with all sorts of other visually communicative features. Technology is what took communication to where it is today. Technology gave us the power to communicate with anybody anywhere at any time with mobile devices. Technology then evolved to change communication itself. Ideas that once could only be communicated with words can now be expressed through all kinds of different media.

Communication begins with language, the distinctive ability which has made possible the evolution of human society. With language any message, any query no matter how complex, can be conveyed between people to people over a limited distance - within a room or place of assembly, or across a short open space. The history of communication is mankind's search for ways to improve upon shouting.