Food Advertising Targeting Children Essay

Improved Essays
Now serving children of all ages, they will be subliminally coaxed into buying the newest unhealthy fun food, and yes there is a prize inside! The tactics of television advertisement have become the driving force behind not just the United States food industry, but many countries around the world. Particularly in the United States, these major food companies target the most influential and vulnerable, children. Consequently, how does the emphasis on food advertisement in television affect children’s eating habits and overall health? This article will discuss the background of television advertisement targeting children, difference between child-targeted and adult-targeted advertisement, the policies or lack of policies protecting children, and possible outcomes of eliminating this form of advertisement.
Food advertisement targeting children made its debut in the early 1900’s. The original advertisements began with children’s books written by major companies. However, these books main purpose was to subliminally entice children into buying a product or requesting parents to buy it for them. In this moment, the first form of product placement was
…show more content…
Children, especially young children, inherently are unable to fully grasp the aspects of advertisements on television. In the article “Food Advertising and Marketing Directed at Children and Adolescents in the US” Mary Story and Simone French discuss this concept stating that children under the age of 8 years old “have little understanding of the persuasive intent of advertising” (3). At this age, many children are unable to fully separate advertisements from television shows. Adolescents are in most cases capable of recognizing advertising tactics, but advertisers have placed a fail-safe to still lure in the adolescent age group into purchasing their product. The tactic utilized is by targeting their weaknesses, hormones and

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    After deregulation, the FTC had no authority to regulate advertising and marketing to children, so marketers could do whatever they wanted to sell a product to children. As a result, marketers use the emotional connections of children to television characters to make a profit. On one hand, they create products from…

    • 1131 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He analyses that the spread of image-based influence has massive impact in different areas of the contemporary world, such as political implications, education, and manipulate people’s choices. Although Jhally provides interesting analysis regarding the general influence of advertising in the consumer society, it might be asked how these Ads influence children with less than 10 years, considered more susceptible than adults. As well as adults , children are exposed every day to different means of advertising, in the television, social media, and public spaces, these Ads specifically food-related can influence and lead children to make different choices that can reflect in their health in the present and future. This paper will examine how advertising can influence on children’s (with less than 10 years)…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Children’s minds are like sponges they tend to absorb just about anything. Furthermore, most children grow up recognizing the signs or logos of fast food joints before they can even read. These images and messages are constantly being pounded in to their little minds like a broken record. It is hypnotizing how much repetition there is in advertisement. Add a cute cuddly character to the mix and children are more likely to remember the brand.…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Targetting children in advertising is a problem with many potential solutions. Some say it should be banned altogether, others suggest that more restrictions should be implemented, and some believe that America's advertisers have a right to market their products however they see fit. It is my belief that aspects from each argument have merit, and that it should be the responsibility of America's parents and schools to teach children about the effects of marketing, both positive and negative. Advertisement is not inherently malicious.…

    • 556 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    What do children do when they come home from school with no parental supervision? What about when parents are tired from a long day of work and feeling guilty for not being accessible to their children? In the article “Kids Kustomers,” by Eric Schlosser, he discussed how advertisements are the works of advertisings companies to evoke a brand loyalty and how children are being targeted by the advertising companies to reach into their parents’ wallets. He speaks about television being a huge source of advertisement directed at children. He shows research on how children can recognize different characters and how it influences the children to encourage their parents to purchase those brands.…

    • 1408 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Advertisers target youth be using specific techniques to hook or catch the consumer's attention. To start off, in The Myth of Choice: How Junk-Food Marketers Target Our Children, Anna Lappé mentions that marketers use colors and characters that youth will respond to. These cleverly designed ads are made by hired advertising experts to use specific colors and/or characters that are popular at the time. Moreover, according to the Springboard textbook advertisers use different…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    American children spend a quite amount of time using various media. What does media do? Advertise. No, not even advertise; they brainwash children! “Children are exposed to an estimated 10 000 advertisements for food per year, 95% of which are for fast foods, candy, sugared cereal and soft drinks”(Obesity Reviews from Yale University).…

    • 980 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Do you ever feel tricked, or duped? Many of us feel that way when we talk about marketing to kids and most importantly, food ads. While many of us don’t think much of food ads and marketing to kids, they are affecting the lives of youths everyday. Starting with online advertising, leading into manipulating the minds of teens, and finally, releasing them into a world of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and more. All of this starts with ads.…

    • 563 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The “FCC prohibits stations from broadcasting any programming containing advertisements for unhealthy food among its core educational programming requirements” (Mikailova, 2014, p.2 ). Through unhealthy policies such as this, decreases the amount of advertisement for unhealthy food may be able to reduce the rate of child obesity. Additionally, the FCC can “enforce limits on the overall amount of advertisements that can be aired during children’s programming” (Mikailova, 2014, p.2), and as a result, children may not develop the negative effects of marketing if these changes are implemented. The FCC continues to research ways to improve the amount of advertising that children review and see each day. For example, in “2011 the working group released for public comment intenetative voluntary standards to guide industry self-regulatory effects in improving the nutritional content of foods which are more heavily advertised to children” (Mikailova, 2014,p.2).…

    • 833 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Actually, food industries use every available technological technique to adapt their products into the preferences of children; creating campaigns that influence children's habits and diets; yet, this impact can be devastating. " Increasingly, fast food conglomerates are using toy tie-ins with major children’s motion pictures to try to attract young people. Nearly 20% of fast food ads now mention a toy premium in their commercials" (Committee on Communications, 2006). Unfortunately, childhood obesity has become a serious, public health crisis all over the world. Globally, millions of children are estimated to be obese or overweight which has contributed to dangerous physical health issues including high blood pressure, diabetes, liver disease…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the advertising industry there are numerous schemes and strategies to increase the sale of products in stores, magazines, television and even on the radio. Unfortunately, advertisers do not simply stick to selling to adults, they too target innocent children. They become the perfect target as advertisers take advantage of child vulnerability and the lack of knowledge, to convince them they need or want the product. As Jean Kilbourne states in the extract from her book Can't Buy My Love How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel , “ Not only are children influencing a lot of spending in the present, they are developing brand loyalty and the beginnings of an addiction to consumption that will serve corporations well in the future.” Many individuals grow up and their love for a specific brand follows.…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The advertisements allows children to seek the intentions of how to think rather than what to think and be yourself. Marketing to children has become a huge social problem since the 1980’s (Schor, 2008). As marketing to children created a major issue, no action has been made to eliminate this tragedy.…

    • 1865 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    If subjected to this unavoidable advertising world, consumers must understand what these companies are trying to do. That way more informed decisions would be made on purchases in the future. Furthermore, stricter regulation surrounding food marketing to children, such as restrictions on pervasive marketing strategies could be a useful tool in addressing an important contributor to childhood obesity. However, it is important that such regulations are implemented across media channels, and that these channels are monitored for compliance with these standards. An excellent movie that represents how people are influenced by the marketing techniques is “The Truman Show”.…

    • 1146 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    (Moore, E. S., 2000). Children have a great appeal to brand as they are being endorsed by many branded characters or celebrities they have grown up watching and aspire to be and fall into the marketer’s traps. In addition markets have further implanted ads into media sources children use by specifically targeting them based on personal preferences. The ads being marketed to children based on preferences disguise themselves in such a way which would make using specific brands as a form of personal expression (“The Marketing of Products to Children”). Thus, the immense advertisement children face, market to the vulnerabilities a child might have, making them naively purse a fake sense of…

    • 1504 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Food advertisements have a negative impact on adolescents. Food ads have a way to manipulate children and adults by presenting a good feeling towards their product. Advertisements like to manipulate the body into believing it needs more food leading it into the "hedonic hunger" stage. Persuading parents into believing they should eat what other people eat is one of many things food ads do to manipulate people into buying their product. A major epidemic caused by poor foods ads is children obesity, which has increased throughout the years.…

    • 1731 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays