Like it or not, advertising to children is a towering industry, with children under 12 influencing over $130-670 billion a year in parental purchases (global issues). Companies in the U.S. alone spend up to $18 billion a year on these advertisements with the goal to create paying consumers as early as possible (Shah, 2010).
Children experience advertising in many different forms – on television, social media apps, YouTube, streaming services, movies, online games, magazines, and much more. And advertisements work well on children. For example, the more a child sees an advert for a specific toy, the more likely that child is to ask for it. Knowing this information, …
Marketing and advertising support the economy by promoting the sale of goods and services to consumers. Up until recently, children have not been perceived as market consumers, yet marketers have begun to target this population to increase production and profit.
The development of consumer behavior occurs gradually and over the course of many years. For this reason, children of different ages are affected by persuasive media in different ways. Scholars Valkenburg and Cantor (2002) propose that there are four distinct phases of the development of consumerism throughout childhood. In the infant and toddler phase, a …
This can have profound impacts on a child’s well-being. Recent studies have suggested that high attitudes of materialism have significant negative effects on children’s self esteem and value orientation (Sramova, 2013). A correlation has also been found between a child’s involvement in consumer culture and depression, anxiety, and psychosomatic complaints (Hill, 2011).
In the absence of proper legislation dictating when and to whom major brands can advertise to, parents must find alternative ways to shield their children from the negative effects of consumerism and social media. Some of these strategies include promoting media literacy in the home to better prepare children to recognize and resist persuasive media …
