Children and Advertising

In the past, the best way to sell a product was to advertise to Mom or Dad. Now, Children are the ones being marketed to. Check out this clip to see how childhood is become more and more commercialized.

Currently, children are either spending or influencing 500 billion dollars worth of purchases. Research shows that, 8 to 12 year-olds spend $30 billion of their own money each year and influence another $150 billion of their parents' spending including purchases of household items like furniture, electrical appliances and computers, vacations, and even the family car. Companies have found that no matter how harmful it may be, advertising directly to children is a more effective way to sell their products. This YouTube clip, highlights the advertisers’ view of children as mini consumers. It is alarming to hear how they intentionally manipulate children with the purpose of “moving product”, making money, and creating lifelong, loyal consumers.

With children's increasing access to the Internet, television, radio, and magazines, marketing tools have spread into many facets of their lives. The average American child today is exposed to an estimated 40,000 television commercials a year. That is over 100 advertisements a day. Unfortunately children, specifically kids under the age of eight, are unable to critically comprehend televised advertising messages. They are prone to accept advertiser messages as truthful, accurate and unbiased. Research shows that young children's exposure to commercials trains them to value material goods and helps shape their consumer patterns as adults. Even older children are negatively affected by the plethora of advertisement bombarding them every day.

Some of the ways marketing to children harms their well-being are:

• Obesity: Rising levels of childhood obesity track an explosion of junk food ads in recent years.
  
• Emotional well-being: Author and Boston College sociology professor Juliet Schor finds links between immersion in consumer culture and depression, anxiety, low self esteem, and conflicts with parents.
• Self-image and sexual behavior: Wheelock College education professor Diane Levin sees correlations with sexual imagery in children’s ads and increases in eating disorders among girls, adding that as “children struggle to make sense of mature sexual content, they are robbed of valuable time for age-appropriate developmental tasks, and they may begin to engage in precocious sexual behavior.”
  

Check out the websites listed below. They offer many effective strategies you can easily employ to help the young people in your life. We must work together to arm our children with the knowledge and tools necessary to recognize the manipulation and combat the negative affects caused by advertisement.

Helping your child make sense of advertising MVParents

Helping your child think about advertising - Better Business Bureau
What parents can do - YouTube clip from Consuming Kids