Advertising towards children

I can still recall, as a child, waking up early on Saturday mornings and rushing to the oversized, enclosed-cabinet, television to watch the Saturday morning cartoons. Having a bowl of cereal was included in the ritual and most times, it was a brand of cereal that I had seen in a commercial on a previous Saturday morning. When I was a child, I did not see commercials as a nuisance – I looked forward to them. I was entertained by the cartoons and then as a bonus, the commercials filled me in on the latest toys, snacks, cereal, and fast-food places which I immediately had to have. Advertisements targeting children have only increased since my childhood. The ever expanding markets for products and the media assault through advertisements are flooding society with ideas, information, attitudes and imagery which is difficult to control. This onslaught is affecting the young minds of our children to a great extent because entertainment is being intermingled with commercial messages. Adults may be able to create a rational resistance to this, but children may not. Children are captivated by television advertisements. They react to these rapidly paced, exciting visuals with their appealing music and their determined sales pitch. Television advertisements are a daily part of a child’s life. It expands their conversation and play as they talk to one another using the slogans, and jingles they see in advertisements. It is apparent that almost every advertisement that appears on the television contributes to their vocabulary. Short advertisements are ideally suited to the attention span of even young children that are not yet vocal. Television commercials geared toward children get played so much that many children know the advertisement by memory. Advertisers use commercials not only to grab the attention of a child but also to get tied into the early learning process. The commercials are usually put together as a series of rapidly changing,