Week 5 - Children and Advertising

Advertising has become common place in our society with more adverts being aimed at children than ever before due to the advent of dedicated children's television channels (Gunter, Oates and Blades 2005). An average child views upwards of 40000 adverts per year while watching television alone and these adverts are responsible for billions of pounds of revenue for the companies that produce them. The adverts that are created specifically for children are designed to be engaging and exciting, portraying products in a way that suggests that owning the product advertised will make their life more fun and that without them they will be missing out on a part of their childhood (Gunter et al 2005).

However not all adverts can be described as such and many popular television programmes are linked to a wide range of products that accompany them. These popular programmes have opened up new markets for retailers and children's television with its associated paraphernalia is aimed at making children want to own the toys and other items that accompany them. However, this is not a new occurrence and children's television and related products have gone hand in hand since they first started to be shown on television.

My four year old daughter is a big fan of Peppa Pig, a children's cartoon that is shown almost continually on children's television. Accompanying the cartoon are a range of toys and play sets along with a magazine and a large range of books, she owns a few of these and is continually asking for more whenever she sees them in the shops, sometimes accompanied by the phrase “but my friend has it” or “I want that one ‘cause I saw it on TV”.

In this respect children should be viewed as consumers as they are aware of products and brands and will pester parents to buy a specific product when another may be equally as good but not marketed as well (Gunter et al 2005). Children are also more susceptible to advertising as they have yet to gain the experience that lets them view advertising critically and are more likely to believe that the claims made in an advert are true.

This is a matter that needs to be addressed in school through direct teaching of advertising through persuasive writing (Burrell and Beard 2010). Teachers need to understand the way that children's advertising works and dissect the adverts by looking at the language and presentational aspects that are used to engage children in the same way that they would teach children to understand and critically evaluate a piece of fictional writing. Also, they need to involve children in creating their own adverts for products so that they can experience the process of writing a piece that persuades people that their product is better than others.

Teachers have a responsibility to prepare children for the world that they are a part of and teaching them critical thinking skills is a positive way to achieve this.

Burrell, A. and Beard, R. (2010) ‘Children's Advertisement Writing’ in Literacy, Volume 44 Number 2 July 2010

Gunter, B. Oates, C. and Blades, M. (2005) Advertising to Children on TV. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.