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Advertising’s Influence on Children

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Advertising budgets have increased over the past 20 or so years, with many advertising companies reducing their budgets in recent months due to the struggling economy. It has been debated by experts over the years about how advertising affects children and their minds. Advertising is done on newspapers, on television, on the radio, on the internet and now on smartphones. In some areas of the United States, advertising is starting to pop-up on in-town athletic fields, school buses and even report cards. This means that no matter where your children look, they will be bombarded with some form of advertising.

What type of effect does this have on your children? Many experts believe that too much exposure to advertising turns children into materialistic people at a young age. Some parents are turning their children’s rooms into an electronic mecca, where being sent to your room for breaking the rules of the house no longer means sitting in silence until your punishment is complete. Instead, if children are sent to their room they can fire up the video game system, turn on their laptop, search the web on their tablet or text a friend while waiting to be ‘released.’

Children across the country are beginning to have cell phones purchased for them as early as the age of five, depending and as late as the age of 16. Once most children hit the age of 11, almost 100 percent of children in the country have had some sort of cell phone. The majority of children spend close to two hours on the internet, partly because they are being sent home from school with research projects from their teachers. Children also spend close to five days per week browsing the internet for anything they can find. Advertisers are targeting children at younger ages each year because the younger they are, the more they learn to recognize symbols such as the McDonald’s golden arches or the Pepsi symbol.

Advertising companies are not dumb, they understand that many parents are looking to please their children, especially if there is a strain on the relationship between the two parties. This means that advertisements will look to coerce children into getting their parents to buy whatever they see on television or on the internet. Children are falling into the world of consumerism today, and parents are becoming more and more concerned with this problem. Parents want to know how to fix the problem and fix it fast before their children cannot be returned to normal children.

One of the best ways to fix the problem is to not five in to your child’s every demand when it comes to buying expensive toys and electronics. If this is done at an early age then the children should not have trouble with consumerism during their early development years.

Advertising's Influence on Children by
Authored by: Harrison Barnes