Negative Consumerism

Consumerism

Moreover, consumerism is considered as one of the major negative consequences of advertisements on children. With the growth of Internet and the widespread of television, advertisers can substantially target the ears and eyes of young children. Children are appealed to commercials that view goods and services they like and want such as candy and toys. Producing advertisements directed towards children that indirectly influence their materialistic behavior to increase the sales of the advertised goods and services; is said to be as one of the persuasive techniques advertisers use to deceive children. Furthermore, a recent research study conducted on young children, where they were divided into two groups, empowered children, children

On the other hand, the effects of unintended advertisements turned out to be negative, as children are highly susceptible to be influenced by persuasive commercials in terms of purchasing behaviors. Children’s vulnerability to advertising messages is due to not processing the information viewed critically, so they cannot come up with rational thoughts while viewing commercials. Therefore, this proves that young children who are influenced by advertisements develop an increase in materialistic behavior. Furthermore, advertisers use the idea of endorsing celebrities in television advertisements to attract children into consuming their products. The celebrity endorsement created an alignment between two images, the product and the celebrity in the child’s psychology. In other words, children can assume product trustworthiness just because their celebrity is associated with the advertised product. This advertising method has substantially influenced children’s purchase requests due to celebrity related product likeability. Specifically, endorsing kids in advertisements to attract more children played a vital role in increasing their materialistic behavior. Children look to kids that share the same age in advertisements in jealousy, as children wonder what makes these kids

Bad habits include various aspects that vary from tobacco consumption to mental and verbal violence. According to the World Health Organization (2002), “A survey a few years ago found that nearly 80% of American advertising executives from top agencies believed cigarette advertising does make smoking more appealing or socially acceptable to children” (p. 1). Children start by seeing smoking as a socially accepted habit in the short run, where they would not think of it that way until they become addicted to cigarette smoking. Tobacco advertisers want to ensure long-term and loyal customers for increasing their revenue; accordingly, they pursue young children using different techniques for tobacco consumption, including cigarettes, since they lack knowledge, awareness and maturity to develop rational thoughts and actions. Tobacco advertisers use a method called classical conditioning, in which they lead children to relate a specific object such as a character to feelings/emotions in their advertisements. For example, Liu (as cited in Hull, 2004) argues that the Marlboro Man is used in a tobacco commercial to target young boys and relate being strong and ruff with consuming tobacco. Moreover, tobacco advertisers can deceive children’s decisions using cartoon characters as characters are smoking tobacco and showing how it is “cool”. This will change the child’s