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Does advertising has negative effect on teenagers? In the simplest sense the word “advertising” means “drawing attention to something” or notifying or informing somebody of something(Dyer 1982). These days, advertising could be found everywhere, no matter you are watching television, surfing the internet or even travelling on public transports. These producers aimed at selling more of their products through advertising without consider the kind of messages they have sent out to the consumers, especially to the teenagers. In this essay, we are going to discuss the negative effect brought by advertising to the teenagers.
Many of the advertisements have given out negative and incorrect information to the teenagers. Exaggerated advertising are easy to find throughout the society. Although not all advertisings affect the adolescents negatively, many adolescents have been contaminated by advertisings. The advertisements provided by some slimming and personal beauty companies are typical examples showing the negative effects of advertising on teenagers. Stinson(2003) have found that teenagers nowadays are trying to achieve unhealthy thin as promoted by the slimming and personal beauty companies.
It is common for teenagers to see advertisements about slimming, personal beauty as well as cosmetic products when they flip through newspapers and magazines. According to these advertisings, beautiful women that defined by the society should be young, thin, fit, white, and has a shiny, white smile while men should be super-fit, firm, and full of muscles(Stinson2003). All these advertisings are trying to create ideal images for both men and women in the society that teenagers should try to achieve.
In the mean time, they are also trying to persuade people that everyone should follow this trend in order to be a trendy person and welcomed by the society. The image that everyone should be unhealthy slim could be easily found throughout Hong Kong as the promotional effect are made everywhere once you open your eyes . this kind of negative idea should not be encouraged among adolescents. “Being a teenager is all about fitting in with the crowd”(Are 2010). This explained why teenagers are the group of people in the society who affected seriously and negatively by these advertisings.
As teenagers wish to be assured by people around her as well as the society, they would try anyways to achieve it. Therefore, they would believe in current advertisements about slimming and cosmetic products as the producers emphasize that people in the society should try every means to become as thin as they could and use as many cosmetic products as they could in order to become trendy and stay young forever. Knowing the characteristics of teenagers, advertisers successfully influenced the thought of teenagers in a negative way. As teenagers are easily affected, the exaggerated advertisements in the society have already contaminated them.
There is another example which showed the negative effect of advertisements on adolescents. In America, teenagers are influenced by alcohol seriously. Much of the reason is the frequent advertising about alcohol there. American children see about 2000 beer and wine commercials per year on television. Alcohol advertisers try to get the attention of teenagers by using hypothetical advantages. They created a positive image that alcohol consumption will supposedly make teenagers have more friends, more fun, greater popularity, and a larger sex appeal (American 3).
But the fact was that 3137 youth ages 16 to 24 died in alcohol-related car accidents in 1993. Alcohol is also sadly related to one-fourth of teenage suicides and killings. These statistics are strong evidences showing the negative effect of advertisement to teenagers. To sum up, today’s’ advertising is influencing the teenagers in a negative way. Advertisements are everywhere in Hong Kong now. As advertisers caught the characteristic of teenagers, who needed assurance given by others; they would only promote the good sides for all products.
This made teenagers believed firmly in the advertisers that there are no bad sides of the products. When they noticed about the bad sides, they have already been badly and seriously affected like the two examples, which were about unhealthy thin and alcohol consumption, mentioned above. These examples are strong evidence in showing that advertising would affect the teenagers negatively. Word count : 684 Reference American Academy of Pediatrics. “Children, Adolescents, and Advertising. ” Policy Statement. Committee of Communications. (1995). Retrieved from:< http://www. ap. org/policy/00656. html. > Are Ads That Appeal To Youths A Waste Of Time? (2010) Retrieved from: <http://www. bpsoutdoor. com/blog/? p=43> G. Dyer(1982) Advertising as communication. What is advertising? .2. retrieved from:<http://www. google. com/books? hl=zh-TW&lr=&id=58StsR8D0gYC&oi=fnd&pg=PP11&dq=what+is+advertsing&ots=FoNVR3cDqe&sig=tqeQkK1FMyE-DPbx2_RlMzuGpbc#v=onepage&q&f=false> D Stinson(2003). Advertising and its Negative Effects on Teenagers. Retrieved from: <http://users. ipfw. edu/wellerw/Stinson. pdf>