Children and Advertising

‘Children of the twenty-first century are fervent uses of new technologies’, including ‘computers, DVD, videos, cell phones, email, text messaging, and so on’ (Evans, 2005. pp. 7). Consequently, children are now more exposed to the viewing of advertisements.

As a result of this, Gunter, Oates and Blades (2005) argue that adverts can influence children’s perceptions of themselves, by reinforcing stereotypes when using idealised images to promote products. Gunter et al (2005) state that such stereotyping is harmful as it places pressure on young people to conform to the ‘ideals’ which are portrayed through advertising. Agreeing with this point are Kenway and Bullen (2001), who imply that adverts convey the world as a utopia, showing images that are better than every-day life, and making children want what it may be impossible to have.

Children are seen as consumers as advertisers have discovered that children make up an enormous part of the consumer market (Lusted, 2009). Supporting this is Gunter et al (2005), arguing that children have spending power, and spend a lot of their own pocket money as well as influencing family spending through the use of ‘pester power’, and consequently advertising aimed at children is increasing.

Advertising is becoming more and more prominent in children’s lives, as Gunter et al (2005) express that the line between advertising and entertainment is very thin, and it is difficult to distinguish between the two. Because it is such a common occurrence, many people support the teaching of advertising in school. Within the Primary National Strategy (DfES, 2006) children in year 5 are expected to analyse and use persuasive language, and a way of doing this is through the use of adverts. Burell and Beard (2010) believe that the analysing and understanding of advertisement supports children with their persuasive writing. Although Gunter et al (2005) acknowledge that there is not enough room in the curriculum at present to provide a wide focus on the teaching of advertisement, they suggest that increasing children’s advertising awareness in school would be very effective, however they argue that parents should also support this movement by helping their children to understand the nature of marketing.

For teachers to be able to help children understand advertising, they must first understand themselves how children engage with adverts. Kenway and Bullen (2001) state that adverts’ prioritise visual communication over spoken communication, therefore attracting children through the use of flashy and catchy images. It could be argued that in some instances this will result in children not even realising they are watching an advert, corresponding with the earlier point about the difficulty of distinguishing between advertisement and entertainment.  Furthermore, Gunter et al (2005) argue that young children may not understand the persuasive intent of advertisement and so, for example, they may believe it is normal to ask their parent for the latest lunchbox snack they saw advertised. In order to help children to understand this, Banaji (2010) suggests that teachers should make children aware of how advertisements target consumers, highlighting to them examples of persuasive and media associated language.

To conclude, as children are viewed as consumers, I believe it is therefore vital that they are taught about advertising in order to understand their intent and to be able to analyse and interpret the language and style of writing of which they could incorporate it into their own persuasive writing.

 

 

Banaji, S (2010) ‘Analysing Advertisements in the Classroom’ in Bazelgette, C.  (Ed) Teaching Media in Primary Schools London:Sage

Burell, A. and Beard, R. (2010) ‘Children’s advertisement Writing’ in Literacy 44 (2)

DfES (2006) Primary National Strategy: Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics [online] http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2006-primary-national-strategy.pdf (accessed 11/02/13)

Evans, J. (2005) Literacy Moves On: Popular culture, new technologies, and critical literacy in the elementary classroom. Portsmouth: Heinemann

Gunter, B. Oates, C. & Blades, M. (2005) Advertising to Children on TV New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates pp 1 – 13

Kenway, J and Bullen, E. (2001) Consuming Children England: Open University Press

Lusted, M. (2009) Advertising to Children United States: ABDO Publishing