Week five: Children & Advertising

Everywhere (television, card, newspaper,…) you can see advertisings, often they are for the children because they can ask at their parents if they can have this thing. These are some examples of advertisings to the children: → “Disneyland Paris free for children” →Nutella : “It must have energy to be a child” → McDonald’s : “In your Happy meal find your favourites characters” →Sergent Major : “Me, I’m too much Sergent Major” (mark of clothes and it’s a young boy who speaks). →”Come play with your favourites characters on Teletoon.fr” →Meccano: “If you can’t have it, build it” (about a drums). →Dop: “Don’t be hot for eyes and easy to brush your hair” (Shampooing for children) →Coca-Cola: “Drink Coca-Cola delicious and refreshind→Thanks for the pause that refreshes” (Santa Claus says that to a young girl). So the children see that and think “it’s good for me because he say it” and in the shop they want some things not really good for the health. “A large proportion of advertisements aimed at children promote food and drink” (Lewis and Hill, 1998). “The number of children with obesity in United States has dramatically increased in recent years, and this may in part be due to the persuasive nature of food advertising” (Strasburger and Wilson, 2002). And more, on the advertisings, we see some celebrity, beautiful person, … to feel like become like these people, the girls because of that doesn’t like themselves and want buy some beauty products to be more beauty. “Therefore advertising a product using physically attractive models may help it to become linked to the other qualities that the viewer associates with physical beauty. However, using beautiful models in advertising can generate unachievable stereotypes” (Martin and al, 1999). Then, there are also bad advertisings, this one pushing the children and teenagers to take noxious things like tobacco and alcohol because they would make like they celebrities , adults, . . . just to seem fun. But they don’t know the risk of it. “As Gunter and McAleer (1997) pointed out, alcohol drinking is frequently shown in positive contexts including celebrations, parties, and eating out”. And more, a lot of children, now, have a television in their bedroom so their parents don’t check what they watch on it. In conclusion, I think the advertising isn’t good for children because it push them to want some things not good for their heath (food, drink, alcohol, tobacco) and the children would like change their physical because they would like seem of the celebrities so yes, the advertising influence children’s perceptions of themselves. The advertising influence children to become as consumers because they would like have the foods that they watch it on the television. The teacher must make a lesson about it to explain the risks of some things like, for example, alcohol too explain the celebrities, perhaps, don’t use beauty product but they present it because they are buy to introducing it on the television and the foods can be don’t good for their health (show them the risk of obesity). Gunter B., Oates C. and Blades M., Advertising and children or tv: contents, impact and regulation, pp 1-13, 2005.