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When Saturday Comes Along One Can Only Hope Hope For A

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When Saturday comes along one can only hope hope for a lazy morning filled with back to back episodes of cartoons. However, only in a perfect world can we watch back to back episodes without commercial breaks. For children that world is non-existent at the moment. Many times the commercials that come after Phineas and ferb or Spongebob are as enjoyable as the show itself. It seems like children enjoy keeping their eyes glued to the television screen more than they should. According to Jennifer Pomeranz, , mentions that the “FCT (Federal Trade Commision) defines children as between the ages of two and eleven and adolescents as ages of twelve to seventeen” (Pomeranz).However, to a parent a child can simply be anyone under …show more content…

This can be problematic because the ads children see after shows can shape all sorts of habits into them : “food preferences, norms, tastes, behaviors, and preferred portion sizes are established during childhood and adolescence and are very difficult to change” (Pomeranz). That is to say that the ads that children see after shows can have profound impacts in a child 's life. Watching a repetition of a sugary cereal commercial can influence a child into buying that product when grocery shopping. Children are power holders and can shape the buying habits of a family: “two to fourteen year olds have sway over 500 billion a year in household purchasings (Calvert). Children really do hold power in a family. They can become targets and fall under the influence of advertisers. In return, advertisers can make children want needs that they don 't really need. Therefore, conflict can arise when a child is denied a product by a parent. There are some ads that can influence a child 's buying habit while others can hammer in trends into a child, influence certain actions or habits. Some commercials can become problematic for children. For instance, the Pakistan Observer mentions that a television commercial of a “biscuit manufacturing company shows a youth jumping off an apartment to force his girlfriend to marry him” (Pakistan Observer). Imagine if a child or adolescent were exposed to this commercial on a daily basis. This type of ad can have a

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