Effects of Advertising on Children - Essay Example

? Effects of Advertisement on Children Introduction In the modern society, advertising has become an integral part with various advertisements placed on magazines, newspapers, TVs and cinemas. Advertising is a vital communication and marketing tool with its objective being to directly or indirectly stimulate sales by showing the superiority of product performance. The degree of effects on advertising in children has been noted to be higher than among adults (Mason, 2012). While advertisers used to indirectly appeal to children through their parents, the current trend has been to target the children aged between 5 and 15 directly in spite of their lack of cognitive or emotional tools to evaluate whatever is being sold to them. And the results have been studied by various researchers with Harris, Bargh and Brownell (2009) concluding that advertisements that directly target children leads to increased preference and purchase of the case products. Thus, advertisements targeted on children do more harm than good to the children. In as much as firms achieve their objectives through advertising to children, a lot of concerns have been raised on the ethical implications based on what Mason (2012) argues as the lack of understanding the basis of advertisement among the children. Such children would be unaware of the meanings attached to the advertisements. The ability of a child to understand an advertisement would be described on the ability of such a child to distinguish between advertisements and non-advertisements and secondly, in understanding that advertisements aim at persuading the target audience. It has been noted that at age 6, children have the capacity to differentiate TV programmes from advertisements. Nonetheless, such children still do not understand the persuasive intent of the advertisements. The first step to appreciating advertisement as a marketing message lies in the ability to differentiate between what is and what is not advertisement (Asadollahi & Tanha, 2011). Acknowledging advertisement as a major marketing tool, companies spend heavily to promote their products in the increasingly competitive environment. Of particular interest would be the advertisement on children known to spend most of their money on a limited range of products which include drinks and food and games and their associated hardware. In the United States, Mason (2012) indicates that children under 12 years old would spend over $13 billion annually on direct food purchases as a result of the popular advertisements which in turn influences a greater $250 billion on family spending. In the UK, an average child has been found to view an estimated 18,000 television advertisements annually compared to 40,000 and 16,000 in the US and China. Similarly, the growth in print media advertisements targeting children has been tremendous with Jones, Gregory and Kervin (2012) giving the example of Disney which now markets Disney Adventures and Disney Girl respectively targeting children over 6 and girls between 6 and 13 known to spend their money on toys, lip glosses, clothing and accessories. The Internet has been widely used as an emergent mode of advertisement among children riding on the findings that children spent a lot of their time on the Internet (Asadollahi & Tanha, 2011). Through online marketing, the frequently visited sites would have pop-up advertisements or sponsored advertisements which open up the children to a myriad of advertised products and services. Positive impact There are scholars who have argued on the positive aspect of advertising on children. Social advertising has been cited by Asadollahi and Tanha (2011) as a form of positive advertising where the objective would be to change the behaviour and attitude of the public and stimulate positive change. For example, the November 2002 to February 2003 advertisement on polio immunization in the US saw over six million children immunised. A research that was commissioned by UNICEF found out that over 94% of the respondents attributed their attendance to seeing spots on TV endorsed by celebrities such as Jaya Bachhan, Amitabh Bachhan, Sachin Tendulkar and Shahrukh Khan. Other advertisements such as those of iodized salt educate even children on the importance of the product in the prevention of goitre. Other researchers (Harris, Bargh & Brownell, 2009) postulate that advertisements improve on the health of children as majority of them provoke them to stay clean as advertised by majority of the soap companies including Lifebuoy, Dettol and the rest. Advertisements on brushing twice daily have been used as strategies to increase product consumption but on the other hand, such advertisements provoke children to keep their teeth clean, germ-free and healthy. The use of cartoons or ideas such as ‘Pepsodent Germicheck – Dhishum Dhishum’ promotes usage of products among children which eventually benefit the children. The advertisements by food companies like Nestle and Amul such as the Amul Kool could have the objective of capturing the young consumer market segment but in the long run, milk products would provide health benefit to the target audience. In fact, it provides more nutrients than other products such as soft drinks which would even be harmful to human health. Negative impact Despite these benefits, majority of researchers indicate that advertisements pose potential harm to children as a result of exposure. Various research findings support this perspective. Notably, parent-child conflict has been noted to commonly occur in situations where parents deny their children the opportunity to purchase their requests, earlier precipitated by some advertisements. According to Jones (2008), awareness and recall of advertisements would develop and improve with the development of cognitive skills in a child. Recall refers to the ability of the child to remember brands and products earlier seen and their ability to also understand the content of the message. Through cognitive processes, the child would develop particular likings and preferences which if the parent tries to prohibit would result into conflict. There are scholars who argue on the negative impact on feeding habits, particularly drawn from food advertisements. Majority of the food advertisements targeting children would advertise fast foods, candy and snacks whose exposure increases consumption and eventually posing negative health implications. While the consumption of these non-nutritious foods could not be harmful per se, Halford (2012) and Jones, Gregory and Kervin (2012) observe that overconsumption, particularly with the exclusion of healthier foods would result in obesity and poorer health among the children. While studying the effect of food advertising on eating habits, Harris, Bargh and Brownell, (2009) noted that in the 14 minutes of the experiment where children watched food advertisements, their consumption was 8.8g, which all encompassed snacks. The researchers conclude that with 30 minutes of watching food advertisements per day, there would be an additional 94 kcal consumed, translating to about 10 pounds increase per year, assuming no compensation by increased physical activities or reduced consumption of the other foods. Food advertisements that promoted fun, snacking, excitement and happiness directly caused an increase in food consumption. These findings oppose the argument by some quarters of researchers who postulate that advertising only affects brand preferences but not the overall audience’s nutrition. Various studies substantially link viewing of alcohol and tobacco advertisements among children with development of positive attitudes towards the consumption of such products. Children would perceive such advertisements as attractive which consequently raises their brand awareness and positive attitudes towards the same. And indeed, companies spend massive resources in advertising such products with Lovato, Watts and Stead (2011) observing that in the US, USD 0.3 billion was spent in advertising tobacco in 2006 in newspapers, billboards, magazines, point of purchase and transit. A further USD 1.4 billion was spent on promotional items and USD 10.1 spent on promotional allowances. The research documents a positive correlation between children adopting smoking and approval and influence of the advertisements. Approval of advertisement ranks among the major factors in prediction of uptake together with peer smoking, age and sibling smoking. There have also been reservations on the influence of advertisements of violent media including video games and movies which target the children. While limited research has been done in this area, it has been noted that there exists a direct association between such media and the behaviour exhibited by the children. According to Brocato, Laczniak, Gentile, Ryan and Ferlazzo (2011), children exposed to violent advertisements such as the violence associated with the Super Bowl football tend to be violent and acquire more aggrieve thoughts. Evaluating this example, violence has been put together with football, a sport considered to be desirable which causes the children to perceive the violence as an acceptable norm. Implication Therefore, the influence of advertisements on children’s psychological development has been found to be profound and parents should be keen on their children’s exposure to the media and provide the appropriate guidance on all media including the Internet, music, video, radio and the others. While measuring the effect of advertising on eating habits, Harris, Bargh and Brownell (2009) observed that without effective moderating effects, food advertising poses great influence on the characteristics of the child because of the great association between perception of the food advertisements and behaviour. Similarly, Brocato et al. (2011) argue on the need for parents to be cautious of the content that their children get exposed to through advertisements, especially those that propagate violence as these could enforce aggressive knowledge among the children causing them to engage in aggressive acts as they become desensitized to violence. The authors propose a mode of viewing referred to as co-viewing accompanied by child-parent discussion which lowers children’s violence tendencies. In addition to the role of parents, Jones (2008) proposes the support from teachers in assisting the children develop the right perceptions, attitudes and behaviours. The teachers should assist the children in developing a critical perspective in what they see and hear in the media, encouraging constructive media use in instilling positive social values. As such, these teachers would need to be aware of what broadcasts in the media targeted at the children and inform respective parents of the impact that such advertisements would have on the development of the children. Furthermore, such teachers would play a crucial role of informing parents whenever violence becomes a regular ingredient of the children’s play and offer support to parents as they put forth their effort in monitoring the viewing habits of the children. The fairness and ethics in targeting advertisements on children had resulted in the responsible agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission intending to ban advertisements targeting on children as its audience (Halford, 2012). But this was considered punitive hence the settlement on a more modest measure: limiting the advertising time in between children’s programmes and restricting those advertisements deemed to make it difficult for children to attribute to persuasive intent. The commission has maintained the proposal on need for public engagement, given the magnitude of research studies that have documented the vulnerability of young children to commercial persuasion. But the effectiveness of using such measures and regulations has been questioned by various scholars. Evaluating 13 UK television channels in 2010, two years after the enforcement of regulations to minimise the number of adverts on unhealthy products, it was found out that the reduction in the advertising on junk food that children were exposed to was insignificant (Halford, 2012). In the first year, the decrease was 13% and in the following year, it was 11.7%, but for both the healthy and unhealthy foods. Thus, in spite of the regulations, unhealthy and healthy food advertisements in the UK were still rampant. It was also noted that even though food advertising during programmes dedicated to children reduced, the prevalence at peak viewing times for children remained unaffected. Conclusion This paper indicates that in as much as advertisements could be aimed at promoting sales, other supplementary benefits could accompany such including encouragement of health observation, adopting hygiene practices and social benefits to the children. Nonetheless, a lot of researchers have cited the negative impact of advertisement on children including encouraging unhealthy living, violence, parent-child conflict and drug abuse. Therefore, parents, teachers and the respective governments have to be involved in the advertisements targeted on children to ensure that whatever the children perceive of the advertisements would positively impact their lives. After all, children do not have cognitive abilities to understand the persuasive nature of advertisements. In as much as there have been a lot of research on the cognitive limitation of the comprehension of younger children on advertising messages, most of the research have been based on television advertisements. As such, more studies need to be conducted on the other commercial contexts and forms. But the research so far supports the fact that advertisements targeted on children pose greater harm than good to them. References Asadollahi, A. & Tanha, N. (2011). The role of television advertisement and its effect on children. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research in Business, 1(9), 1 – 6. Brocato, D., Laczniak, R., Gentile, D., Ryan, D. & Ferlazzo, M. (2011, January 31). ISU study finds effects of TV ad violence on kids; researchers see Super Bowl implications. Iowa State University News Service. Retrieved 30 November 2012 from http://archive.news.iastate.edu/newssity /2011/jan/adviolence Halford, J. (2012, October 2). Regulation of junk food advertising has minimal impact. University News. Retrieved 30 November 2012 from https://news.liv.ac.uk Harris, J. L., Bargh, J. A. & Brownell, K. D. (2009). Priming effects of television food advertisement on eating behaviour. Health Psychology, 28(4), 404 – 413. Jones, S. C., Gregory, P. & Kervin, L. (2012). Branded food references in children’s magazines: ‘advertisements’ are the tip of the iceberg. Paediatric Obesity, 7(3), 220 – 229. Jones, T. (2008). Violent advertising on Canadian primetime television: a frequency analysis and potential impact. Canadian Journal of Media Studies, 4(1), 41 – 70. Lovato, C., Watts, A. & Stead, L. F. (2011). Impact of tobacco advertising and promotion on increasing adolescent smoking behaviours. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 10, 1 – 45. Mason, P. (2012). Marketing to children: implications for obesity. Nutrition Bulletin, 37, 86 – 91. Read More