The Influence of Advertising
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What is the Influence of Advertising on Your Children?
Learn more about how advertising has changed over the years; its target, the subtle messages, its prevalence, and pervasivenss. Find out about the influence of advertising on children and what you can do to counteract or avoid it by reading more here on this page.
The Prevalence of Advertising in Our Children's Lives
There have always been advertisers who market to children. Clearly products such as toys and sugary cereals have been around since before our grandparents were small. Just as today, those who made such products developed ad campaigns to promote them to an interested audience. Many years ago however, it was a bit easier to recognize what was an advertisement and what wasn't. Advertisements were limited to displays in a store, a newspaper ad, or a brief spot on TV or radio.Some merchandising was creeping in during the 60's with Beatles lunchboxes and similar items. Today however, half of the clothing that kids wear include an advertisement of one sort or another. Backpack, shoes, and many accessory items also display the most popular brands for a child's peers to see. The influence of advertising is increasingly far reaching.
Today, ads are much more pervasive and less recognizeable as a sales pitch. For instance, while eating at a favorite child oriented fast food restaurant, a child may receive a toy. That toy may also be tied to a movie, a cartoon, a video game, or to a website that offers additional games, toys, and related products. Books, clothing, accessory items, backpacks, cell phones, scooters and more are all tied to the same theme. There are a seemingly limitless number of products that are then presented to the child.
These ads for children, just as those targeted toward adults, create a need where none existed previously. They also hook children, and subsequently their parents, into an endless loop of buying more and more products.
Advertising is no longer limited to store displays, radio and TV commercials, and newspaper ads. Some childrens' literature is developed for the primary purpose of marketing. Movies, cartoons, video games and more are also developed for the purpose of marketing additional products. Some schools even allow advertising on books, educational posters, on the sides of buses, and more. This MediaWise page discusses some of the current practices in schools.
As we are bombarded with ads from every direction, even as adults these games, movies, children's meals, websites etc. are seldom recognized as the mere marketing methods that they are. With increased prevalence and subtlety, the influence of advertising has grown enormously.
Other Factors that Increase the Influence of Advertising on Our Children
Children today watch far more television than children did in the early days of TV. In addition, they are online where advertising is prevalent as well. The influence of advertising has permeated much of what our children do and see.This Media Family page indicates that the average American child views over 40,000 television commercials each year. This doesn't even cover some of the more subtle advertising such as the use of specific products in the shows that kids watch.
More and more children spend time online as well. This Marketing to Children paper discusses the fact that marketers are targeting children as young as 4 years old via the internet, often with the parents being unaware.
Clearly, many parents have concerns about the amount of marketing and the pervasiveness of advertising messages directed toward children. However, there is another disturbing trend that has emerged in recent years; the promotion of "adult type" products to children. Vehicle manufacturers for instance know that children influence what parents buy but even more importantly, they know that if they can "hook" a child on their brand name while young, they may have a customer for life. Whether it's the Porshe ad that shows the grade school boy recognizing the car as the epitome of "cool" and success, or the Chevy that wins the NASCAR championship; these brands are sealed into a child's mind at a young age.
The dolls that little girls play with may promote brand name make up, board games may make use of a specific credit card, and an HO race track often includes a specific brand of car. All of these promotions are paid for by manufacturers and serve a very specific purpose. These messages often have the effect of making kids consumers of such products at an increasingly early age and assures that they develop their brand loyality earlier.
Is Advertising Really That Influential?
There are a number of studies that support the idea that advertising is particularly effective with children due to the fact they don't have the same critical thinking/judgement as an adult. This brief from the APA highlights this thought and discusses how such advertising can lead children to unhealthy food and lifestyle choices.Advertising has also been shown to greatly influence a child's body image and sexual development. This Young Media site covers many of the related issues. Children today often feel the influence of advertising's subtle messages more stongly that those provided by schools and even parents.
Certainly many child development specialists have argued that advertising has taken a disasterous turn as far as the welfare of children. This 1999 letter from a group of psychologists expresses their concern regarding the use of psychology in the marketing of products to children. It indicates that such knowledge is now often used in designing ad campaigns to the detriment of children. This more recent APA task force (American Psychology Association) has also called for restrictions based on such concerns. It appears that the professionals concerned with child development have grown increasingly concerned about the influence of advertising.
Tell Us What You Think
What You Can Do to Counteract the Influence of Advertising on Children
There are a number of things that you as a parent can do to reduce the influence of advertising on your kids.Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
Working to Reduce the Effects of Advertising
Concerned parents are obviously the first defense in counteracting the influence of advertising. Educating children and restricting access are great first steps. However, for those who want to do more, there are resources available to allow such individuals to become more involved in efforts to influence advertisers and government regulators.The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood describes itself as:
"a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, parents, and individuals who care about children. Headquartered at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston, CCFC is the only national organization devoted to limiting the impact of commercial culture on children. CCFC's staff and Steering Committee are activists, authors, and leading experts on the impact of media and marketing on children. Most of us are also parents.
A visit to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood website gives individuals access to educational materials on topics such as media violence, sexualization, ad creep, body image, materialism, obesity, and more. Visitors to the site can become involved by:
Learn more about the Effects of Advertising on Kids and How to Counteract It
The Word Online About the Influence of Advertising on Kids
- Why is it so hard for kids to lose weight?
- Think about it, says Dr. Stephen Daniels, chief pediatrician at Children's Hospital Colorado. Every day kids are exposed to advertising about fast food instead of home-cooked meals. They're surrounded by vending and soda machines at school.
- Cliff Kuang
- Just witness the number of Congressmen who can be found in ads tooling around in pick-up trucks or bouncing their grand kids on their knees. But Congress, if you look closely, doesn't much resemble the rest of America at all.
- Douglas Crets
- I sit on an advisory board at Klout.com and I help companies and brands figure out the true emotional stories of their consumers, so that they can use them in influence channels and social networks to sell more and generate deeper trust and loyalty for ...
- Mixed progress made by US government and schools to improve food marketing ...
- In a study requested by Congress in 2004, the IOM determined that food marketing influences children and adolescents to prefer, request, and consume high-calorie and nutrient poor foods and beverages. In December 2005, an expert IOM committee issued a ...
The Influence of Advertising: Was this page helpful? Let us know!
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angella joey
Jan 12, 2012 @ 11:50 am | delete
- yes it was very helpful to me as a student, working on my project was much easier after goin through the entire page... the video interviews were just to the point...... it has really helped alot, and just makes me realize how are the kids of today getting influenced by the media... thankx alot..
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packaging design
Dec 6, 2011 @ 1:19 am | delete
- Just like integrating traditional promoting strategies with social media methods, it's necessary to combine private interplay as well. However, as a substitute of an aggressive, focused gross sales approach, the interaction must be subtle and guiding. Social media tools must be used to make points while making the experience nice and interesting. packaging design
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aansystone
Nov 24, 2011 @ 7:10 am | delete
- advertersers must not target kids for the promotion of their products they must target the parents and let them realize via their advertisement that Why their products are good for their children!
~Advertising On Taxis
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sherly george
Nov 19, 2011 @ 11:19 am | delete
- the every word in this page is absolutely true and helpful for such unaware and irresponsible parents.All parents should read this and try to be careful when there children go in such a way.Today every parents buy mobile,mp4,mp3 and even laptop for their children,for their children's happiness and satisfaction.But they should know that by this they are spoiling their children's future....
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Phillyfreeze69
Oct 16, 2011 @ 5:46 pm | delete
- Parents must monitor their childs viewing habits. Using the "parental controls" available on TV's and Computers can help parents edit the content their child watch and view online.
Being actively involved with a childs viewing habits and not using the media to be our "babysitters" will have a postive effect on our childrens growth and development.
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Rose
Oct 7, 2011 @ 1:57 am | delete
- thank you for this website. it helped me a lot to finish my research paper and this is exactly about my topic. thanks again.
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rita
Sep 22, 2011 @ 2:11 pm | delete
- Thank you very much for this great article! Now that I have to make an essay of advertising, this was really helpfull!
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RetroMom
May 6, 2011 @ 9:25 pm | delete
- Great information. Again, it is very useful.
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promotional-coupons-codes
Apr 28, 2011 @ 1:29 am | delete
- Very helpful lens. Thanks for sharing.
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opert
Apr 23, 2011 @ 1:40 pm | delete
- Nice article.Thanks for sharing. Work Plan Platform
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Introduction: leh4.
The Prevalence of Advertising: Ninjapoodles.
Other Factors: Callme_Crochet.
Is Advertising Really All That Influential?: CosmicKitty.
What Can You Do? CindyFunk.
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: renfield.
by mulberry
Advertising often targets children but experts say that it has negative consequences. Get the details and learn how to counteract the influence of adv... more »
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