Advertising to Children in Europe
Today's television is perhaps the most popular of all past-times, inducing people of all ages and dimension to spend fruitless hours glued to a glass screen and wooden puppets. Therefore what ever is put before the vulnerable on screen will be scrutinized to the very last end? In this case, we are looking at advertising. A format of television used to portray certain images and opinions about a particular product and/or service. Television is not the only distributor of advertising but it is the most influential, with more people seeing TV advertising than any other format. The Swedish ban focuses on children under the age of 12. The Swedish government wants to extend this ban to all the member states of the EU in 2001 when it assumes the presidency of the EU. Currently, in Sweden all advertising that is deemed to be aimed at children under 12 is prohibited."TV advertising may not aim at catching the attention of children below the age of 12 years."(Swedish RT law Chapter 7-4) The two arguments put forward are simple. Firstly, the ban should proceed because of the unethical nature of advertising that attempts to get to parents wallets through children. In opposition are the arguments that suggest advertising does not affect chi
The evidence against the ban continuing, in my opinion, is less conclusive. The argument attempts to display the evidence that children are not affected by advertising. Is this to say, that even though they understand the concept of advertising, it does not affect them negatively. In 1975 the National Science Foundation commissioned a report on the effects of advertising on children - "It is clear from the evidence that television does influence children. Research has demonstrated that children attend to and learn from commercials and that advertising is at least moderately successful in creating positive attitudes towards and the desire for products advertised" "Children under 8 are particularly vulnerable. They believe that advertisers always tell the truth". (Strasburger 1995) Research conducted by Campaign magazine suggested that children under the age of 12 cannot totally understand the concept of advertising whilst those in the under 6 age bracket cannot always distinguish between programmes and advertising. "If violence gets the ratings then advertising will get the violence". (Dodderidge)
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1819
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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