Advertising To Children Is Spreading, Even To Schools, And May Produce Harmful Effects.

           Marketing in the modern world is extremely specified and children as a demographic are prime targets for advertisements because they are impressionable and carry brand loyalty into their adult years.   Children receive exorbitant amounts of persuasive media throughout the day because of the increase in media sources that are catering directly to children in the present day.  These advertisements can have both short-term and long-term effects on the child and can be harmful.  One of the most controversial ways in which children are being advertised is corporeal sponsorship in schools and exposing of children to ads during school hours and on school grounds.

In recent years the avenues for advertising directly to children have increased dramatically and children are consuming more media than ever.

            Recently it has become easier for children’s advertising to be separated from adult advertising and targeted specifically.  With the recent advent of Cable TV and specialized channels that target specific audiences there has come a plethora of channels devoted just to children, giving a direct line for companies to send persistent and persuasive messages straight to children.  There has also been an increase in child aimed websites and in the access that children have to the internet.  These websites easily infiltrate content and advertising not only tailoring ads to children as a whole but tailoring ads specifically to individual viewers.  Perhaps the most worrisome avenue for children’s advertising is ads in schools.  Schools now make contracts with food and drink providers and use only those products in school.  People seem concerned about advertising to children during a time when they should be focused on learning.

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            Advertising has also grown to include corporate sponsorships that may help pay for books, sports, arts, etc. which are often accompanied by supplies emblazoned with the company logo.  Preschool teacher at the University of Maryland's Center for Young Children and mother Dawn Mooney says that corporate sponsorships in school may distract children from their education and undermine parents' efforts to shield children from certain products and advertising in general. 

Effects on children of advertising directly to kids can be both short-term and long-term.

            The advertisements aimed at children can have the immediate and intended effect of a child asking for a product but they can also have effects that last longer, sometimes even a lifetime.  Through repeated exposure to ads, logos, products, and free samples a child’s brand preference can be manipulated and therefore form a lifelong loyalty to a specific brand of product.  An unintended result of ads aimed at children is the parent-child conflict. Mooney says that advertising to children is unnecessary and believes that parents should be able to make purchase decisions without advertisement fueled input from their children.


           Because parents have to deny some requests that their children make, children often fight and/or get angry with their parents and this leads to conflict in the home and in the parent-child relationship. These conflicts may damage the parent-child relationship and cause trouble later on with a child's overall view of his/her parents.  Some scholars have also hypothesized that exposure to advertisements leads to a materialistic outlook.  Because ads are leading children to believe they need every new toy, gadget, happy meal, or pair of shoes kids can confuse priorities and view materials and objects as more valuable than they really are.

There are many different ways in which the negative effects of children’s advertising are trying to be counteracted, but none completely successful.

            Some people do believe that the best way to deal with what seems like an inevitable evil is to teach children more critical viewing skills at a younger age.  This means educating children about advertisements and their intentions and showing them how to view these advertisements with caution. This critical viewing is a skill that should be taught throughout a child's lifetime and passed on to the next generation, but it is not necessarily the most effective solution to the children's advertising problem.  Although this critical viewing education seems like a good option, children under the age of about 8 do not have the cognitive skills to view ads critically regardless of the quality of education program.  Cognitive development is something that cannot be effected no matter the amount of education provided.  Therefore, this plan to give kids the skills to view ads critically is ineffective until these developments are made around age 8.  The FCC and the FTC have both enacted policies to help protect children from the negative effects of advertising and to regulate said advertising.