Advertisements directly effect children's lives in harmful ways. Children can not understand the effects that advertisements have on them, especially children ages eight and under. As said by Roy Fox, consumption and the ads that drive it are the most powerful cultural forces that shape our attitudes, beliefs, values, and lifestyle. If something is not done about the ever increasing amount of ads that influence children in harmful ways, the future of nation will not be able to live up to its full potential.
Advertisers all know that children have a very large amount of influence over the purchases made in our country, which happens to be 500 billion dollars worth of influence (National Institute on Media and the Family). They also know that, "Children in the United States spend more time watching television than they spend on any other single daily activity except sleeping, and the average adolescent spends more time watching television each year than attending school".(Prevention
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Advertising
Banana AdvertisingInstitute for the Center for Health Improvement ). Children see ads and then they go and complain to their parents asking them to purchase for them what they saw on TV. Usually this product is not what a mother or father would want to buy for their child, perhaps it is not even a very good product at all. But the advertisements find ways to creep inside of children's minds which are so spongelike and make them believe that they want this product. Kids see over 40,000 commercials a year, and children as young as four can recognize logos.(National Institute on Media and the Family) Advertisers know all of this and have been increasing marketing techniques all the time because of it.
Advertisers do not care about the mental or physical health of children. They are much...