write an article on television advertising on children
Answers
Explanation:
The advertising industry views teenagers in society as a viable market segment, because of their immature understanding of the media and its dazzling impact on teen and young undeveloped brains. The media is increasingly focusing on kids and adolescents to captivate with advertisements. According to marketing research companies, teenagers are important to marketers because they can spend a substantial open income, spend family money easily, and they are easily able to influence their families to spend on large and small household purchases that appeal to them. Furthermore, Kids are also a viable market because they can easily influence, lifestyle, and overall trends; and provide a view of society and how it is now and what it is likely to become.
Therefore, marketers and advertisers are seeking advertising spaces that are kids exposed to in order to reach them with such advertisements designed to provide an illusion to them, and portray a certain image to their innocent and trusting nature about a product or service. For example, in order to reach young teenage girls, advertisers would use almost half the space of the most popular adolescent magazines (Moschis & Mitchell, 1986). Furthermore, they would include branded material in video games in order to reach the younger men. They would also target highly popular television shows between the children and teens in order to reach them.
These advertisements normally have a mental and physical impact on the teenagers viewing television. This essay will discuss the mental and physical impact of advertisements on teens viewing television, the individual impact and the group impact as well as the physical and self-esteem impacts.
A Recent study by (Pediatrics, 2011) states that “Children and adolescents view 400 00 advertisements per year on TV alone.” This is happening despite the fact that there is a law that limits advertising on children’s programming to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour during weekdays. However, much of children’s viewing occurs during prime time, which features nearly 16 minutes per hour of advertising.
The mental impacts of these advertisements on television on teens are often split into an individual level and a group level (Friedkin, 1998). The mental impact effects on the individual level are the influence mainly practiced on parents and teens communication and influence amongst each other about products or services. However, the mental effects on the group level are perception, attitude and actual behavior of the viewer (Moschis & Mitchell, 1986).
Although in a household it is normally the parents which are responsible about the money, advertisements are often aimed at teenagers. Advertisers believe, if the advertisement of a product is successful the likelihood of the parents buying it in order to please their children is higher, and some kids will ask their parents to buy the product. “Television advertising viewing is positively related to the youth’s propensity to play a more influential role than their parents in mentioning the need for products, discussing purchase of products, deciding what should be purchased, and actually buying products.” (Moschis & Mitchell, 1986) Because advertising plays a vital role in the family decision making process, advertisers try to influence the child which in turn influences the whole household and the parents. This in turn helps with the communication of the family, it also improves teenager communication interpersonal skills, and the presence of the child in the family decision process makes them feel important and that they possess an active role within the household which is important for personal healthy mental growth.
(Moschis & Mitchell, 1986) State that the children between ages 12 or under convince their parents and pupils to spend around millions a year. Some teens are able to buy the products they see advertised on their own by saving for it, or by earning money in order to buy it. This group impact is very influential as teens influence each other to buy new gadgets and products, and it can also create tension in between them as human nature lets them always strive to what they think is best, they try to compete with each other in terms of fashion, gadgets and trends that in turn benefits the advertising company and proves the success of the advertisements in causing a group impact on teens which normally results on a negative manner in the teenagers behavior and psychological growth (Friedkin, 1998).