Hello, I am a student at Conard High School here in town and would like to share my opinion about the way that big-name companies advertise and take advantage of our children today.
By today’s standards, the technology that we have the ability to advertise on is far higher than it ever has been before. Television and radio have given companies a much easier way to push their product onto the people of the country. However, it also affected who the advertisements were shown to. One of the main differences in who can now be advertised to is our children. Many people oppose and criticize this. Citizens have chastised companies for targeting children, because the can not tell the difference between advice and an advertisement. People have now begun to take steps to reduce how companies advertise to young children. Many people are constantly arguing over whether or not these restrictions should be in place. People that support these claim that it would reduce the poor behavior and decision making in children and teens. People that oppose this claim that it is a violation of children’s consumer rights.
There are many people in the country that support these restrictions on advertising to children because they can see a link between the unfair advertising and how children behave. One of the big examples is smoking, or more specifically, the use of e-cigarettes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed the data of the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), a self-administered poll given to over twenty thousand middle and high school students in 2014. The results were very interesting. The CDC researchers “...found that the greater the exposure to e-cigarette advertisements among middle and high school students, the greater the odds of their e-cigarette use” (1). The money spent on e-cigarette advertising rose from $6.4 million to $115 million from 2011 to 2014, and e-cigarette use in children rose from 1.5% to 13.4% (1). There is a pretty significant correlation there. However, e-cigarettes are not the only bad product being advertised to children. A much more lethal one is alcohol. This is something that is probably a lot more accessible for many teens. 45% of high school students claim to use alcohol and 26% report to binge drinking (2). Ads are becoming a much more prevalent thing. Most of the ones that get the message across use cartoony themes or characters in their advertisements to appeal to kids and claim the “drinking is fun!”. It is direct fact that as advertisements for negative products are shown to children and teens have gone up, so have the amount of teens who make these bad choices.
The other end of the stick argues that limiting how advertisements are shown to children violate their consumer rights. They believe that it is not the job of the government to control how companies advertise their products, but it is the job of the consumer to know what is a good and what is a bad purchase. On the topic of childhood obesity, people claim that “...it is ridiculous to assume that advertising persuades children to eat fast food...it is their parents. Banning advertising is not going to work to prevent parents from giving their children pocket money to buy lunch or go to the mall while they are at work” (3). So, citizens argue that it is a family decision to keep the junk food and alcohol out of the house, and when there is no knowledge that this stuff is bad, it is not the fault of the advertisers that kids go out and stuff their face with a cheeseburger when they are hungry.
Personally, I believe that we should restrict how advertisers and big name companies market their products to children. They are victimized because they don’t have the knowledge base to be able to tell the difference between a sale and a good piece of advice. If someone told them that McDonald’s was the best thing in the world, chances are they will be begging their mom for a 6 piece chicken nugget the next time they drive by. We should keep the regulations in place that don’t permit companies from telling a kid that smoking makes you cool. It is unfair to these children that companies are taking advantage of them to make money while they have no idea.
