Entry 9: Paragraph(s) on Advertising to Children

Imagine a sexy woman: thin body, long luscious brown hair, lustrous eyes that peer into your soul, and a captivating smile. Her greatest feature is her face, for it is young-looking, naturally beautiful, and soft; this is because she is only eight years old. She is advertising a light blue two-piece bikini and at the same time is holding a strong pose and looking cool. Many young children would want to be in her place and have that same bikini. They want to look as good as her so that they can grasp the attention of many. What I have just described is disgusting, yet it is how the advertising industry lures its consumers; it is what defines “cool”. It is the way in which the children of this generation are being persuaded. Not only our younger generation, but ninety-nine percent of the women in this country are also falling into the traps of advertising. This industry does not care whether the product they advertise actually works or if the way they advertise harms human beings. Although it cannot be said that advertising is the true cause of peoples mental disorders, eating disorders, low self-esteem, anxiety, etc., there is a very strong correlation between both factors. Society does not notice the way that advertising is shaping them; they do not realize what a disgusting industry it really is and how strong of an effect it has on the world, especially on women and children.

Advertising is practically forcing young children to grow up. Whether or not their minds are developed and mature enough, their bodies are. The bodies of young children are forced to be replicas of those found inside stores, magazines, and television ads. A big part of this overwhelming reality is the consistent abuse and manipulation by the mass media. Advertisers take advantages of the insecurities and anxities of children, and play the role of the nurturer and offer them products to make them feel older. Once again, as I have mentioned before, the advertising world is solely profit based, in which the pretty penny is the only incentive in mind, disregarding any potential harm that is done by manipulation the young minds of children. It is ironic, how this generation is becoming students of mass media. Less and less parents have the time to be home for at least half of the day, and children rely on television to learn about life, such as sex and beauty. They are misinformed about the true beauty of life, and how sex is a beautiful thing. They on the other hand, are told that beauty is solely physically such as thinness, a good body, and a gorgeous face. As regards to sex, children are exposed to sex on a daily basis, and int he long run influences them in making them think it's okay to have sex at an early age. At this point, the advertising world has been incorporated into our every daily lives, and the only responsible way to counteract these manipulations is by teaching media literacy to our young kids.

As more time is passing by we are finding that the media is controlling not only our spending and self-criticism but also the lives of those vital to our future: our children. Since children are more vulnerable to advertisements, corporations are spending billion of dollars and advertisements directed at children each year. What is concerning is that this mass culture of buying is affecting children in more ways than what meets the eyes. Juliet B. Schor claimed that “[children] spend more hours in worklike activities… [And more] of daily life is structured by commercial and consumer activities than was true for previous generations (94). As most of our society goes on without doing anything about these advertisements children are being pressured to buy certain brands at earlier ages. Most importantly, children are being forced to grow up faster as they are given less play time while trying to copy what they see in the media. If things have come to this point I only wonder what our future will hold once this media brainwashed generation grows up. In this composition I plan to point out the effects advertisements have on children. In doing so I hope people will be encouraged to stand up against the abuse of advertisements directed at children.

I see no difference between sexual predators that prey upon childrens' physical weakness in order gain instant gratification and the advertising industry who manipulates the childrens' underdeveloped brain in order to receive profits. Both are sick, and take advantage of the most vulnerable group around. Like taking candy from a baby, the advertising industry takes away the innocence of a child with relative ease. Growing up, we are socialized by the things around us. As a matter of fact, we are constantly searching for things to be socialized by. We look to other people and to institutions we consider to be influential in order to gain knowledge and wisdom about how to live and survive in the world. We are all empty, looking to be filled by lessons, experiences, knowledge, and culture. I would argue that children feel this need to be "filled" more strongly than any other group. Being of young age would mean less experiences, life lessons, and influential messages if you really think about it. It takes a real evil and greedy person to exploit the underdevelopment of a child's brain in order to solely produce profits. The people at the tops of corporations and advertising are basically raising children nowadays. We are teaching life lessons that value being superficially “cool” and selfish and this, in turn, will lead to the degradation of whats left of our 'culture” as we know it.

Constant critical self-conscious messages being instilled in a developing child’s mind is malicious and unfair for the child’s well being. The popular saying “children are the future” is completely accurate and if consumer industries are corrupting our children’s values and priorities revolving around the consumer market and materialistic objects, how is our “future” going to act and look like? The vulnerability of these innocent children is extremely fragile, therefore, if they are being taught that a normal individual looks like a Barbie or Ken doll, what will be made of those who do not fit the stereo-type by the year 2030? If the advertising industry continues to contribute to the feelings of body hatred and insecurities through movies, magazine ads, and television commercials, children will live a long hard life trying to reach satisfying results with their appearance. Interestingly enough, there are as many food and beverage advertisements publicized EVERYWHERE as there is images promoting the “perfect” appearance. Oxymoronically, some of these gorgeous models are the ones promoting food advertisements! If the keys to how these models keep their figure while eating this junk food is by daily exercise, than the media should incorporate this little left out detail in some ads! This suggestive solution would hopefully subtract depression, anemia, bulimia, and all other unhealthy diet habits and add a routinely healthier happier lifestyle for children. The need for a protective boundary of advertisement’s promotions of promiscuity, drugs, alcohol, and perfection is very weak and needs to have better regulations. Children’s senses can only be completely supervised to an extent and ads with negative connotation that manage to get by to the child may harmfully affect their lives forever.

Advertising is an industry driven by profit maximization to achieve this they have identified a vulnerable target audience that is malleable and easily manipulated to work towards their advantage. Is it wrong to advertise for children? Maybe, but in the world of big business right or wrong does not exist, what does exist is red and black numbers that make the difference between a continued job and unemployment. Similarly, corporations also become caught up in the journey* for profits and they moved to buy, merge, and generally acquire other companies in what came to be known as the “Merger Mania” of the 1990s. It is through mergers that the tobacco giant Phillip Morris came to possess Kraft foods. With the acquisition of Kraft, Phillip Morris enlarged their consumer base to include some of the most important consumers in society-children- as well as the advertising knowledge used to sell products to kids. Advertising to children had the potential to be dangerous if in the wrong hands, the wrong hands being a tobacco giant selling popular children’s lunch products.

Advertising companies are both immoral and unethical for targeting a group of individuals who haven't lived long enough to have accurate logical reasoning. These companies make a living by manipulating the minds of young children and subconsciously coercing them into making economic decisions they know nothing about. Although they may argue that children are consumers just like there parental counterparts,they should not be the subject of conferences and expositions who aim to teach the most effective ways to trap children into buying there products. Companies don't view children as small precious people that need to be nurtured and looked after, but instead as potential patrons of their business. The well being of the child and his/her development into an adult is irrelevant to advertising companies. Ultimately, advertising companies' views of children in the consumer society and is faulty and needs to be reassured to assure the best interest of our children is always being met.

Children are controlling the system that keeps the circulation of our country rolling. The industrial system in the US regulates the economy of a capitalist society by aiming there money hunger at the easiest targets for profit, children. Advertisement corporations have gone to ridiculous extents (surveys, psychology, door to door interview etc) in order to find successful strategies to obtain children “loyalty” to their product. The way these corporations feed of the undeveloped vulnerability of a child’s mind is an atrocious act of unethical selfishness. Advertisement should be regulated and limited prohibiting this abuse to the children of the US. This is not only an issue of the profit corporations make from advertising but the problem of child exploitation. How will we stop it?

Advertising is an issue in which everyone is a target. In last week’s reading assignments we read on how children have and still are advertisements primary target. Day by day children are being sucked into a consumer group. Sadly things are not changing. If anything things are getting worst. There are other things that, along with advertisement, are affecting the growth and development of children. Electronic media is now changing the way children manage their time. Statistic shows that children in the United States between the ages of 2 and 18 spend about 40 hours per week in front of a television, computers, etc. It is sad how there are many “forces” that aim to convert innocent children into devoted consumers yet there is only a couple of weak regulations that try to protect children. They are weak not because they do not care about children but because in their attempt to help and protect children they are being stopped and turn down by organizations or simply by Congress. Today’s reading was based on how girls are also advertisement’s target. Advertisements are influencing young girls in many ways. For instance, advertisements influence girls that there is nothing more important than having an ideal beauty. One of the many messages that advertisements send is that body and beauty is the most important thing about a girl. Thus, “Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful and, above all these days, they must be thin.” While reading both last week and this week’s articles I have realize how bad advertisements is getting. If you think about it, there isn’t much to do to stop advertisements messy cruelty. Even when we do have the chance to change things around it will require years and years to put a stop to all this. Advertisements have already manipulated society to the point where it will be extremely difficult to convince people that they are in charge of their own self. It will take a lot of effort to make them realize that they are capable of making their own decisions without having to be influence by billboards, commercials, magazines that only care about their money.

Advertisers have long advertised to children. The Kodak company proudly claims to have been one of the earliest to see the potential of the market for children. They advertised the Brownie the children as a kind of toy. Who else would see the fun in this crazy gizmo used for taking pictures of people. It was a smart stratagy. But as authorities indicate, while companies have long advertised to children, something seems to have really gone out of whack about 1980. A few years before that the Federal Trade Commission held hearings to analyze the effect of advertising on children. They were prepared to start, at least, to regulate the advertising of sugar filled cereals to children. But then the matter came before Congress, and not only were the sensible plans of the FTC turned down, the FTC was stripped of the power to regulate programming to children at all.

And who spearheaded the attack on the FTC? Why, of course, the companies that produced sugary cereals and products for children. One executive testified before Congress, in effect: The United States is a capitatlist country. Every person is responsible for himself. The last thing we need is a National Nanny. This is capitalist ideology, not sound philosophy. Obviously the most important flaw in the argument is that children are children and not adults. One might claim that individual adults should be responsible for themselves; but children are, almost by definition, not responsible for themselves or their actions. When a child nags a parent for a product, the child is not responsible for his behavior. He or she had in fact been manipulated. X and Y write: "Children age 8 and younger are especially vulnerable to the exploitative techniques used by marketers because their ability to reason logically and abstractly is not yet fully developed." In effect, the authors continue a child before the age of 8 simply does not understand advertising. He or she sees a smiling and happy child who is eating a happy looking colorful cereal, and they do not understand that the children are acting and that eating his happy cereal does not automatically make one smile.

Start them young

Left and right our children are being bombed with false illusions of an alternate reality, slowly but surely the enemy creates a world seemingly close to 1984. Big Brother monitors our every move, manipulates our every taught and pry on the vulnerability of our children. Slowly but surely we as a nation enter a war, us (the working class) against them, the multimillion corporations. Their weapon of choice, Television; constantly broadcasting a world of fantasy, a forbidden apple, a world without gates when in reality what they really offer is nothing short of living life as Truman Burbank. Now that the enemy has invaded our homes, work, gym, schools, bathrooms, and just about everything else, it seems as though the only thing left to do is waive our white flags and go out and consume.

Seeing as how our children are the central targets, it is now more than ever critical to regulate the things our children are exposed to. It is vital to be aware of the effect excessive materialism can have on the development of children's self image and values. Start them young corporations say, meaning; let us lower their self worth, importance, values, and understanding, all in order to make them only that much more susceptible and malleable. The trick is to expose and rape our children’s natural void. As Juliet B. Schor writes, “Psychologist have found that espousing these kinds of materialist values undermines well-being, leading people to be more depressed, anxious, less vital, and in worse physical health.” Big corporations know this and pay psychologist like Juliet B. Schor to feed them all the information they could ever need to make the perfect mass destruction bombs. But who helps us? No one! It is therefore our responsibility as humans to not allow these big corporations with their million dollar advertisements to essentially dehumanize us, making us nothing more than part of their profit margin.

Advertisement knows exactly what young girls are going through when they are maturing and even so they take advantage of their insecurities. As I was reading this article I was horrified at the statistics that it was revealing about young girls and eating disorders. It is not fair or correct to blame eating disorders on advertisement but we can say that it reinforces the behavior in these girls. One specific quote said, “…40 to 80% of 4th-grade girls are dieting (Stein, 1986).” I had to pause and think about this because I could not get it through my head that girls in elementary school are on a diet! To think that my neighbor’s children or that over half of my brother’s peers are actively trying to lose weight by restricting themselves from certain food or by causing their bodies to not function as they are supposed to. Advertising cheats these children out of their childhood, making them believe that the bodies that they see on magazines and television are a goal, but in reality, it is an illusion.

Boy--the comments above are powerful in their rejection of the role of advertising in the development of children. Kristal C writes:

I see no difference between sexual predators that prey upon childrens' physical weakness in order gain instant gratification and the advertising industry who manipulates the childrens' underdeveloped brain in order to receive profits. Both are sick, and take advantage of the most vulnerable group around.

Now that is a powerful statement. I doubt many people in the advertising world would agree. How can Kristal make a case?

Can we begin to categorize the ill effects of advertising upon children:

a) damage to the body (what do we have in readings to support the claim that suguary sweets contribute to obesity).

b) psychological: what evidence do we have to suggest advertising effects the self-esteem of young people, causing them to become self critical at an early age.

c) moral or ethical: can we make the claim that consumer society teaches young people to equate happiness with money and the acquisition of material goods.

I think if one were to to find quotations and elaborate upon them and these points in general that one could make the case that advertising to children is a very, very bad thing.

I decided to write my two paragraphs instead of submitting it to the blog due to time constraints. I hope I didn't take the directions too literally.

With different types of products and services, children are quickly becoming the victims of advertising. Ads have created an image of perfection, an image that is directed at children. Manufacturers began using children to sell their products and they use advertisements to attach them to the world of consumerism. Many problems come with the act of advertisement. For one, children become more self-conscious about themselves, wishing to reflect what is advertised in television, magazines, etc. These advertisements persuade children into growing up faster. Old childhood habits are slowly diminishing due to manipulating advertisements. Children now spend a greater amount of time behind a television set than outdoors. Consumption is not only causing social problems, but health problems as well. Children are being exposed to a variety of unhealthy foods, therefore causing weight issues. McDonalds, for example, creates advertisements with the child in mind. They use incentives to keep children attached to these meals. Juliet B. Schor gave an example of McDonalds including $50 toys in their happy meals in the year 2002 (Rd pg 93). Pictures of a happy healthy child carrying a happy meal are advertised everywhere, but what they don’t show is the way these foods affect the child’s health.

Advertising has grown and developed from a primitive process to a finely tuned billion dollar industry. The procedure of convincing people to purchase items has become so refined that marketers are able to make people believe that they truly need an unnecessary item. Advertisers have a choke hold on society; with the unveiling of new items people are in danger of suffocating if they do not acquire the product because ads continuously tell people that they will be unable to live their lives without the item. The earlier the advertising companies can get their hands around people’s necks the earlier they will be able to shove things down people’s throat. As advertisers began to realize that establishing a connection at a young age would develop strong bonds to the products that they sell they began to advertize more to younger children. Now, children are inundated with a continuous stream of ads which allow companies to wrap their hands around the frail little necks of young children, controlling their purchasing habits well into adulthood. The advertising industry should not be allowed to market to children because children have underdeveloped minds that do not allow them to make logical conclusion like adults can, therefore industry guidelines and regulations must be set to control the advertising industry.

Advertising and the mass media are now a major part of our society. The ads influence people, mostly on the unconscious level. People do not realize that these ads sway them to do things and act in certain ways that are depicted as socially acceptable. Advertising has targeted adolescents because that is when adolescents are “more vulnerable to the seductive power of advertising.” (pg. 126) Teenagers are sensitive to peer pressure and therefore and inclined to do things that society deems acceptable. Adolescents worry about what others think about them and tend to try and “fit in” to certain social groups at school. The article states on pg 126, “our children are not brought up by their parents; they are brought up by the mass media.” I believe that this statement is true because many young girls in their teens spend a lot of time trying to conform to things they see on tv and try to be socially accepted. Teenage girls worry about their appearance and want to be like the women they see on ads and tv. They are presented with beauty norms that lead many teenage girls to diet, leading to eating disorders and other mental and physical problems. Adolescents are very easily influenced because it is a time of self-consciousness.

Parents birth the child, media raises them... hyperbolic statement? Maybe, but this is what it seems like. After reading articles about advertising I have become extremely conscious of their role in society, and it is huge.Everywhere I go and everything I do, I am noticing them, and the supreme measures companies go to target children. I now understand how detrimental advertising can be to a child's cognitive development. As a result of advertisement, children lose the ability to adjudicate their own beliefs about the world and themselves in that world. Television, radio, bill boards and second hand advertising attack us when vulnerability is at its best. It sneaks into our lives and from then on we become media robots. Take a look at yourself now, can you really distinguish what you want from what media has raised you to believe you want? Stepping outside the box, you're a rebel now, forget social control, you're doing you? Well think again, their are advertisements for everything, even those "unique individuals". Whether you choose to believe it or not, we do what the media wants us to do. Media constructs society and society controls you. This is why I think advertising to children needs to be strictly monitored and maybe the next generations won't be as screwed up as we are.

Parents birth the child, media raises them... hyperbolic statement? Maybe, but this is what it seems like. After reading articles about advertising I have become extremely conscious of their role in society, and it is huge.Everywhere I go and everything I do, I am noticing them, and the supreme measures companies go to target children. I now understand how detrimental advertising can be to a child's cognitive development. As a result of advertisement, children lose the ability to adjudicate their own beliefs about the world and themselves in that world. Television, radio, bill boards and second hand advertising attack us when vulnerability is at its best. It sneaks into our lives and from then on we become media robots. Take a look at yourself now, can you really distinguish what you want from what media has raised you to believe you want? Stepping outside the box, you're a rebel now, forget social control, you're doing you? Well think again, their are advertisements for everything, even those "unique individuals". Whether you choose to believe it or not, we do what the media wants us to do. Media constructs society and society controls you. Advertising does not allow children to make their own decisions, and because of it we have epidemics of things such as obesity. This is why I think advertising to children should to be strictly monitored. We need to allow our children the freedom to create their own sense of identity and maybe the next generations won't be as screwed up as we are.

It appears that through our apathy and complacency we’ve come to allow manipulative marketing to prey on youth. Stealthily and relentlessly, marketers target children because they are fully aware of the malleability of their developing minds. Marketers know that in order to ensure consistent market success for their companies they need to invest a great deal of time, effort, and money into socializing children as consumers. Product advertising strategically exploits the natural developmental process in children; advertising methods, therefore, are designed in correspondence with the level of social, emotional, and cognitive development of children. Perhaps some people may then be convinced that it must become the responsibility of adults to monitor their children’s exposure to product marketing vigilantly in order stunt the effects of advertising. However, those people must take into consideration the degree to which marketing has infiltrated the world of children. When marketers can take advantage of schools in budget crises and employ recently developed practices such as “viral” marketing, the only way children will be able to escape the merciless claws of advertising is to live in a bubble; and even then, it will only be a matter of time until they claw through.

Advertising to children should be illegal. I do not understand how a country as "great" as the US is, allows for such acts to happen. Eevn though this is a capitalist country where people are taught to fend for themselves, I believe that the country should have at least a bit of dignity in preserving the minds of children. Don't they know what kind of damage they are causing? First, we are corrupting the minds of children. Second, each generation that has passed has been hit more and more with advertising, making them more and more prone to consumerism. Through consumerism, we are putting the country at risk because some of these children will go on to become political leaders and other significant leaders, but there minds will be corruped because of consumerism. With this said, I ask, if other countries have laws that prohibit advertising to children, why can't we?

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