Essay --

Nowadays the children spent most of the time watching television than years ago, and therefore viewing more advertisements. The study conducted by Children’s National Institute found that children in America are spending more time watching television programs in a year than they are spending in school (Dumont, 2001). Within their website, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that advertising to children is deceptive and studies shown that children recall the ads on television whether it is an ad for a toy or food items. Children are even remembering the ads targeted towards their parents and also able to identify the alcohol and tobacco ads (Gardner, 2011). There exists a strong need to ban advertisements on television programs targeted for children under age 10 because the children are just like flowers having innocent and immature minds and they are not at a position to judge the benefits and harms associated with the products being advertised. Advertising is the art of a ttracting the human intelligence to get money from it. In the present scenario the great deal of adverting has been targeted towards children. As per the study of the Global issues organization, children are the most captive audiences for the United States marketers and an average child watches an estimate of nearly forty thousand television commercials per year (Gardner, 2011). Advertisement on TV targeted towards children can adversely affect their mental and physical health. The minds of children are very sensitive and they believe advertising claims they see on the TV. As the children under age 10 have immature minds the advertisers use special tactics to appeal to young viewers. The children also emulate the characters they see in the ads such as Barb... ...ernment says that advertising targeted to children is morally and ethically unacceptable, since children cannot distinguish the purpose of advertising. In Belgium, it is forbidden to telecast the ads during children’s programs as well as during the 5 minutes before and after them (Gardner,2011). Australia also banned advertisement during children programs. In addition to these the parents also had to educate the children the negative aspects of advertising and teach them the importance of healthy food habits. It is the responsibility of every parent to make their child aware of the negative effects of the media surrounding them and educate them. Will the marketing agents will completely stop targeting children remains a question of concern and the future of the children and their families remains ambiguous until there is a complete ban on advertisements.