ADVERTISING TO CHILDREN

CHILDREN AND ADVERTISING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADVERTISING EXPOSURE

 

• In the United States, a child watching children’s programming will see twice as many ads as a child in Denmark, Germany, and France, and somewhere between six to ten times as many as his or her counterpart in Austria or Sweden. (1)

 

• Non-school media use is higher in the 11-14 year age bracket than the 15-18 year-old group. (4)

 

• “71% of all 8- to 18-year-olds have their own TV in their room. In addition, half have a video game player (50%) or cable TV (49%) and a third have a computer (36%) and Internet access (33%) in their room.” (4)

 

 

ADVERTISING IN SCHOOLS

 

The Media Education Foundation produced the 2003 documentary Captive Audience, which outlines the current state of advertising in public schools. Students are a niche market: they are segregated into age categories and are in the same place for much of the day throughout most of the year. The documentary argues that though company-sponsored educational materials is often entertaining and attractive, the underlying issues is one of endorsement, as Chris Gerzon points out in the film: “What is wrong with having children learn how to subtract using Hershey’s Kisses?  What’s wrong is that you are subtly, or maybe even blatantly, advertising candy to children. It means that the school is sanctioning this product.” (2)

 

Company-sponsored materials are also problematic when they operate as a branch of company PR, like the “educational” video about oil spill cleanup that Exxon sent as a gift to many high schools across the United States (2).

 

But are many children exposed to academic advertising?  The official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics published in 2006 that not only do soft drink companies have contracts with over two hundred school districts, which means that schools restrict onsite beverages to those allowed by the company, but there are also over 4,500 Pizza Hut chain outlets in our nation's cafeterias. (3) Until just recently, the Channel One program, which “consists of 10 minutes of current-events programming and 2 minutes of commercials” was broadcast into roughly a quarter of American public high schools; advertisers paid $200,000 for "the opportunity to target 40% of the nation’s teenagers for 30 seconds” of the 2-minutes commercial allotment in the 12-minute show. (3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOD ADVERTISING

 

Food is a basic, a necessity for survival.  But now food is one of the mostly highly branded consumer categories.  And now “food ads account for over 50% of all ads targeting children.”  A study of 52 hours of Saturday morning children’s cartoons found that the most advertised item is cereal. Another study found that the “the most requested first in-store request is breakfast cereal”, with a whopping 47% of children, a higher percentage than those asking for snacks and drinks (30%) and far above the 21% that demand toys. Coincidence?

 

ADVERTISING AN . . . IDENTITY?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps the most dangerous effect of advertising targeting at children is the effect that a high amount of commercial radiation may have on the developing psyche of a child.  One area is in how women are portrayed in advertisements, from (1) ads selling body-image disguised as products, (2) ads that assume and portray a certain persona for Woman and (3) ads that sexualize the female and/or make her an accessory to the product, not a consumer with agency.

 

This field is well-documented. Some troubling findings include:

 

• “After exposure to the sexy/pretty ads, compared with the gender-

       neutral or counterstereotypic ads, women indicated less interest in

       vocational options that emphasize quantitative reasoning and also

       endorsed lower leadership.” (6)

• "studies have found that nearly half of females ages 6-8 have stated
  that they want to be slimmer." (7)

• "The negative body image among women between the ages of 18 and

  25 has become so strong that one study reported that “over ½ of
  females between the ages of 18-25 would prefer to be run over by a
  truck than be fat, and 2/3 would rather be mean or stupid” " (8)

• " "about 70 percent of college women say they feel worse about their
  own looks after reading women’s magazines" " (8)

 

 

FOR FURTHER STUDY

 

This is just a tiny scratch at the glass prism that is the huge advertising industry.  A scratch won't change the way a prism bends light waves into separate colors.  Neither can one webpage even introduce the issues, the debates, and the research.  So for more information and further study, see the                      page.