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Children between the ages Of six and ten have a “crucial shift in their cognitive skills. ” At the age of six, they are starting to “actually “reason” in the commonsense meaning of the word. ” Because of this, children that are younger than eight years old are “cognitively and psychologically defenseless against advertising (Children). ” Also if a child is below the ages of 4-??5 years do not always classify programs from commercial content, even when program/commercial operation devices, like “we will be back after these messages” are used.
Along with that, most children younger than 7-8 years of age do not recognize the persuasive intent of commercial appeals. This means that they do not really understand the concept of advertisements and that it’s all just a way for the company to keep having their products on the market and keep the face value up. The marketing and advertising business know this and they use it to their advantage by manipulating children that don’t have the means to make their own decisions yet. Children view about 40,000 ads per year in just N.
This occurs despite the fact that the Children’s Television Act of 1 990 which limits the ads on children’s programming to 10. 5 minutes/hour on weekends and 12 minutes/hour on weekdays. However, much of children’s viewing occurs during prime time, which features nearly 1 6 minutes/hour of advertising. This shows that even though there is a law in place to help “protect” children, most children watch shows that aren’t on the children’s program. However, the Internet has become big with the younger population as well. Industries have noticed this as well and are starting to take advantage of this.
In 2002 alone, $21. 6 million was spent on Internet banner ads. This increases the amount of ads children are exposed to now. With TV and the Internet, children under the age of 8 are even easier to target. With all these advertisements, children are influenced to buy the things they see, especially if they are under the age of 12. This is because they influence the parents to buy the product by any means; mean inning crying or throwing a tantrum. Since this happens, children under the age of 12 and teens influence arenas to spend over a total of $130-670 billion a year.
To look further into the number, children 11 years and younger spend about $18 billion a year. Children between the ages of 8 and 12 spend about $30 billion a year and teens spend around $160 billion a year. A way to resolve this would be to restrict the advertisements that are primarily directed to the younger audiences. This will help reduce the factors where they are being “manipulated” as just an early age where they don’t even have the means to help them recognize commercials or to recognize the ace that these commercials are place there to persuade them to buy the product.
Just like how some of the Western countries have done. For example, Sweden and Norway forbid all advertising directed at children younger than 12 years, Greece bans toy advertising until after 10 PM, and Denmark and Belgium severely restrict advertising aimed at children. Also parents can set a limit on how much their child can watch TV. This will decrease the amount of ads that the child is exposed to and decrease the amount of “manipulation” that is going on in the child’s brain. References Children, Adolescents, and Advertising. (n. D. ).