Children and Advertisement - Essay Example

The advertisers target the children in their advertisement since they are the most likely to change and adopt the corporations ideologies. Companies and large advertising agents seek to create a future investment by influencing the children today without considering some of the effects they pose to these children. Changing a child’s perspective today means that the child will be oriented into buying the said product in the future and has a minimum chance to be influenced by the then advertisements.

The paper will deliberate on the effects caused by television advertisements to children. The paper will reference children as a term to represent all those below the age of eighteen years. The first effect attributed to watching commercials on the television is being persuaded to seek the product. Dittmann (2014) states that children tend to recall most of the ad’s content following a single exposure to the commercial. These commercials increase a child’s desire to possess the advertised product without considering the limitations and the challenges associated with the acquisition.

Commercials incorporate psychological research to make them more compelling and convincing (Dittmann, 2014). Through the use of doublespeak, these advertisements persuade the children that they ought to have the product and an easy way to achieve their goal is to nag the parent. Doublespeak is the deliberate use of language that disguises the actual meaning (Lutz, 1997). Advertisers have adopted the use of doublespeak in their commercials to mask their intent and persuade children into acquiring these products.

Lutz (1997) states that advertisers use words to show product superiority even when the products are of equal quality to the competitors’. For example, advertisers gloss over the competition’s disadvantages that certain products present through the manner in which they