Introduction
The act of advertising to children involves the employment of aspects that positively or negatively affect children. The practice has not always been regulated by legislation but over the last couple of years, and after much research on the topic, many nations now regulate the practice of advertising to children with numerous laws.
In this research, we are going to attempt to widen the scope on the impacts that advertisement has had on children and how to protect as well as educate them. The hypothesis developed for this paper states that advertisements aimed at children do not only affect the short term choices but also affect their future livelihoods in the dietary and nutritional choices they make..
The major cause for concern for various organizations has mainly centered on the marketing of consumer goods that mainly involve foods and toys. The 57th World Health Assembly that was held in the year 2004 was instrumental in endorsing regulations in the Strategy for Diet, Physical Activity and Health (DPAS).
The major aim of this resolution was to try and curb what was termed as obesity and other chronic diseases that arise from unhealthy eating habits and that are caused by the propagation of those foods in the minds of the end consumers who consist of children.
The World Health Organization gave governments in conjunction with consumer groups the right to ensure that any messages that are deemed negative and contrary to the recommended dietary practices and proven physical activity should be done away with in favor of those that are positive.
In the same year, there was a report by Hawkes (2006) that asserted that there were stringent regulations aimed at curbing certain forms of advertisement food products to children. Although the actions of the relevant government arms, lobby groups and even regulators have been lauded by many authors, there appear to be gaps that if not addressed could reverse the gains that have already been made.
Key among them is the fact that rules and regulations brought forth have been centered mostly on countries considered to be high-income, leaving the low income countries without any meaningful regulations. There was also a glaring omission of all other forms of advertising since the regulations were focused on television advertisements.
Literature review
According to a study done by the Institute of Medicine (2006) (IOM), by analyzing 123 published empirical studies, there was a general consensus that advertisements of food during programs intended for children has negative consequences to their eating habits and directly relates to the high cases of obesity.
This conclusion stems from other researches that have been done proving that children under the age of 12 do not comprehend the differences between programs and advertisements.
This follows the ban that had been instituted by Sweden and that is considered by the United Kingdom to the same effect. The supporting fact here is that children consider all advertisement to be accurate and do not have the capability to understand the motive of the advertiser.
There has been other literature that suggests that the advertisements that target children have a direct impact on their health. Harris (2008) states that there exists a clear disparity in the contributions by the departments of public health’s funding and the amount of funding that companies channel into the marketing of non-nutritious products.
The assertion is that people develop brand loyalties at very tender ages which develop sub-consciously into adult life ultimately propelling the consumption of unhealthy foods and also the developments of unhealthy practices.
Additionally, there is a focus on the traditional methods of advertising to children during the process of regulation.
However, this trend has been termed as narrow minded as children nowadays have access to the internet, social networks, games and other digital devices where they are most susceptible to falling prey to such advertisements as compared to other media (Montgomery & Chester, 2009).
This research is aimed at analyzing the effects that advertisements have on the dietary habits of children and in particular on their health which encompasses mental, physical and psychological. Whereas the physical manifestations have been researched on in detail, there has been little that has been done on the effects of all forms of advertisements on the psychological and mental health of children.
In order to better understand the consequences of these advertisements in children, there is need to look at the parenting standards and the changing roles of parents, teachers and the society in general.
There is also a need of defining the advertisements as the way that they are conveyed and phrased has also evolved over time. According to Jennifer (2006), a member of the American Psychological Association and a scholar studying the effects of advertising for many years, psychologists should be contracted to give parents and their children guidance on the role that advertisements play on the psychology of the child.
She further asserts that the changing nature of the way advertisements have been formatted and then presented to the audience plays a major role in the way the message is received, interpreted and the eventual manifestations on the individual.
Further, she notes that there has been increased advertisement in the schools themselves and ponders on whether the school administrators had given thought to the consequences of such adverts in the learning process of the children.
The problem is so dire that not only do parents and children require the assistance of psychologists, but so do educators themselves who continue to be oblivious of the consequences that advertisements have and continue have even to some extent propagating the advertisements themselves.
Methods
Advertisements targeted at children have severe and long lasting negative consequences which affect their overall health and nutrition habits. There is need for evidence to back this hypothesis up so we will prove this in the research to be administered.
In this research the survey method will be applied with the aim of gathering primary data that will be paramount to the conclusion and recommendations that will be put forth. Verbal results will be gathered and analyzed and will encompass children who are between ages 8 and 9 years old.
The sample size will be 40 and the subjects will be children ages 8-9 from the North Clackamas School district. Their views will be collected by means of personal interviews administered after church on Sunday.
The interview questions will be aimed at analyzing the information that the children believed following the commercials and what choices they would make about the products promoted. The major point of focus will be on the determination that children believe whatever advertisers say about a product.
The other aim of this research will be to approve or disprove what previous researchers have asserted concerning the effects of advertising on the children.
The effects that we will attempt to unearth are those that are considered negative as compared to any positives that may arise from this research.
In conducting the research, the children interviewed will be required to view two advertisements, played in the course of a popular program, which will be about food items or drinks, in this case a sugary product and a non-sugary product.
The advertisements will each run for 60 seconds and then the questions will be asked in order to assess which is the choice for the children by qualified interviewers. As a way of eliminating bias, the participants in the experiment will not be required to communicate with each other about their views during its course.
The data that will be collected will be analyzed using the Chi-squared Interaction Detector (CHAID). The method is commonly used to analyze the reaction between different variables. CHAID tends to be more flexible than more traditional statistical methods where often more stringent underlying assumptions need to be met.
With a CHAID analysis, both the dependent and independent variables can be nominal (categorical), ordinal (ordered categories ranked from small to large), or interval (a “scale”).
Another important feature is that CHAID analysis displays the modeling results in an easy-to-interpret tree diagram. This is extremely useful when having to explain complex analysis in a clear and non-technical way.
Here, the use of two different advertisements in the middle of a program will help analyze the relationship between advertisements and the reaction that the sample will have.
The advantage of this method is simply that the data will easily be visually projected for interpretation. The sample size chosen is also meant to assist with the ease of interpretation; however, ultimately we would like to use a much larger sample size to get more accurate results. We hope to find a correlation to advertisements targeting children and the children’s choice of products after viewing the ads.
Discussion
The simple use of persuasion is a very powerful tool for advertisers as it creates an illusion which appeals to the individual’s need for the product being advertised. This fact is even more compelling to children who do not have the power of reasoning as the marketer.
Ultimately, the child becomes persuaded that the product is important even if its value is not. Children have a very photographic memory and can remember vividly what was depicted in an advertisement that was directed at them. Therefore, there is need for control of advertisers as the results of the child being persuaded do not always lead to his/her development.
The research that was earlier conducted depicted that the advertisement of products to children does not always yield positive results and most of it has been focused on the child’s health; most notably obesity (Dittmann, 2006). The other consideration is not only on the negatives but also on the positives that have been made.
However, this research is meant to show that not only are the consequences of these advertisements on the health of the child but they are also psychological as well as mental. The fact that Harris (2008) have found that brand loyalty is created when people are of a tender age and still manifests itself in their adult lives shows that there is a psychological aspect to advertisements that is subconscious.
There are many products in the market that are targeted at children. Nowadays, there has been a digital revolution that has been coupled by many videos and video games in the market. There is a direct relationship between the playing of violent video games and the manifestation of violence in the lives of these children while growing up.
Traditionally, sports such as wrestling entertainment used to be the motivators of violence but the content could be altered so that warnings were issued and caution was taken. In the present days, video games are played inside the homes where content may not be censored as parenting habits have also changed.
There has been increase in violence in schools some even bearing fatalities like the shootings in schools seen in the US and elsewhere. The advertisement of violence in the social and other media has a direct cause to the violence by children. This research is aimed at producing facts to this effect.
A large part of the problem arises due to the “privatization” of the media that propagates the advertisements by the children. There are numerous numbers of these children that are owners of computers connected to the internet and at their private rooms in houses far from the eyes of adults or guardians who can explain or prevent the messages of the advertisements.
This leads to a society that is devoid of guardians and proper role models which has very negative consequences. The recent trend of celebrity marriages that last for only a few days or even hours and advertised on social media leads to the belief that this is the way the world operates in children.
The mental consequences and psychological ones are extremely bad and the most alarming thing is that advertisers use psychological research to make their messages even more persuasive.
There are several limitations that may constrain the furthering of this research. The most notable is the lack of a substantial budget in order to draw on a larger sample and in more areas with different social-economic dynamics.
The research is mainly based on a small sample that may not be accurately representative of the population. The other limitation is that the time needed may be substantial in order to come up with a detailed research that factors the growth in technology over a given period of time.
For this kind of research to be applicant in global situations there is need to observe a large sample over an extended period of time so as to also record other variables that might change the behavior of the children after watching advertisements.
Conclusion
Undoubtedly, advertisements have a major influence on the marketing of products to the end users. The markets are so saturated that the end result is segmentation where a given company focuses a single product to appeal to a given set of people rather than to the whole population.
This has given rise to different kind of advertisements aimed at children and adolescents. In the research to be conducted, the influence that these advertisements have will be measured in children between the age of 8 and 9.
The previous researches conducted have tried to make relationships between advertisements and children with very many hypotheses proven. Here, we will attempt to prove that indeed advertisements do negatively affect the choices that children make and this has led to an unhealthy nation.
References
Dittmann, M. (2006). Protecting children from advertising. APA’s Council of Representatives supports a task force’s call for stricter regulations on ads geared to kids. Vol 35, No. 6.
Harris, J. (2008). A Crisis in the Marketplace: How Food Marketing Contributes to Childhood Obesity and What Can Be Done. Annual Review of Public Health, 30:211-25. Web.
Hawkes, C. (2006). Marketing Food To Children: Changes In The Global Regulatory Environment 2004-2006. International Food Policy Research Institute, World Health Organisation.
Institute of Medicine (2006). Food Marketing to Children and Youth: Threat or Opportunity. Web.
Jennifer L. H. (2006). Priming Effects of Television Food Advertising on Eating Behavior. Yale: Yale University.
Montgomery, K. & Chester, J. (2009). Interactive Food and Beverage Marketing: Targeting Adolescents in the Digital Age. Journal of Adolescent Health, S18-S29. Web.