John Bender
Jb097918@ohio.edu
Without a doubt, children and young adults are the most impressionable demographic and often the most willing to find ways to purchase what they want. Children do not have fully formed brains and many do possess adequate ability to think critically. Naturally, this makes the youth a highly valued target for advertising.
While the practice of advertising has been around for thousands of years, advertising towards children did not become commonplace until the advent of cable television which allowed advertisements to be directed specifically on networks for kids. According to a study by the American Psychological Association, it is "estimated that advertisers spend more than $12 billion per year to reach the youth market and that children view more than 40,000 commercials each year". There is serious money as well as a nearly overwhelming amount of advertiser content being directed towards children. As children see this high volume of advertising they become conditioned as theirs brains develop to constantly want the shown products as well as becoming desensitized to advertisements.
The cognitive effects of advertising at a young are further demonstrated by the APA study with the report stating, "Studies of children indicate that those below the ages of 4–5 years do not consistently distinguish program from commercial content... as children reach the age of 4–5 years, they typically perceive a categorical distinction between commercials and programming, but primarily on the basis of affective or perceptual cues only." Essentially, kids at a particularly young age are the most vulnerable to targeted content leading and their brains struggle to differentiate between what is meant to be advertising and what is meant to be entertainment.
Furthermore, the organization Common Sense Media outlines several guidelines regarding the negative effects of advertising on youth. The organization suggests advertising might play a role in kids and young adults behaviors including hooking them early on products such as fast food and junk food as well as dividing and targeting genders since it is easier to focus advertising purely on demographics and psychographics. Setting these patterns at a such a young age is particularly harmful because it can guide how pathways in the brain are formed and impact how messages are perceived leading to a change in how decisions are made.
In conclusion, advertising hyper-targeted towards children and young adults is distinctly harmful due to the impressionable nature of kids and the patterns it can form. The practice is harmful and vastly unethical due to the aforementioned ramifications.
John, this is a topic I find so interesting and did a research project on it. There are so many reasons people target kids, they are gullible, and typically get what they want. If you target a kid early on they will become brand loyal and will coutinue to buy your product.
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