Advertising Today is Engrained in Children's Lives

When I was younger, the only ads I knew about were on the tv and in magazines. There wasn't social media that was super prevalent when I was growing up, as opposed to kids today. Advertisements have changed drastically from the anti-smoking ads that I knew (and was traumatized from) to the ads that children are exposed to at almost all times of the day today because of how prevalent social media is in daily life. When asked about what ads they see the most, my youngest sister said that all she sees are "Liberty Mutual ads," which are much different than the ads that I saw as a child. She isn't aware that most of the content that she sees on YouTube and the shows that she watches are just extremely long ads.

The Netherlands Bands Food Advertisements for Children

Advertisements have lost a lot of their ethical rules, especially when it comes to children. Due to how easy it is for kids to just hop onto social media, it's hard to determine what advertisements should be filtered for children and what can be left for adults. There are apps that were created for children in mind (YouTube kids, Messenger Kids, etc), but some parents still allow their children to use to the original platforms that were intended for adults. This is damaging to children because not only are they absorbing information that wasn't intended for them, the ads can be extremely inappropriate.

Depending on the age of the child seeing the ad, it can have different lasting effects. For children ages 3-6, they can identify the different ads that they've seen, identify what they are supposed to buy and tend to think of them more as helpful announcements. For school age children, they can remember the message they saw, understand what the ad is trying to sell and they don't yet see ads as something to question. Older children start to question what is being advertised, understand how they tend to make the prices different than they actually are, see similar ads popping up on social media and start to question the intent of the ads.

Young children don't see ads as harmful, they see them as the truth. While this doesn't mean that they will go out and purchase everything advertised to them, there is something clearly wrong about preying on young children's innocent minds to advertise products.

"Is it fair to allow advertising to an audience that is too young to recognize commercial messages are biased and have a persuasive intent?" asks Dale Kunkel, a PhD and professor of communications at the University of California.