Advertising effects on children

Never there been a subject that has aroused as much discussion as that of advertising. These last few decades have seen a development of this powerful marketing process and major tool of communication practices. Nowadays, advertisements are present in all fields of our modern societies. The debate about the positive and the negative effects of advertisements is still relevant today. Despite the fact that the main purpose of publicity should be the informational aspect, advertisers use their influence in a distinct way. Sometimes manipulative, their controversial techniques use psychological appeals in order to increase purchases. Publicity has unfavorable side effects on individuals, especially on young and vulnerable consumers: children. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that food habits, lifestyles and behaviors are guided by advertising detrimental models. Teenagers represented core targets for advertisers because media has become one of the most substantial socialization agents known today. Adolescents spent 140 billion dollars a year in 2004 in various products, and 12 years old kids 25 billion dollars, but they are also able to act upon a $200 billion dollar budget (Mary Story and Simone French, Food Advertising and Marketing Directed at Children and Adolescents in the US). According to the Professor Sharon Beder, “[y]oung children are increasingly the target of publicity and marketing because of the amount of money they spend themselves, the influence they have on their parents spending […] and because of the money they will spend when they grow up” (101). The powerful advertising industry has understood since few years the potential of the adolescent market force. They have seen an opportunity to infiltrate what is today the third major market. Youth is the target of an intensive advertising because they