▶ Your Answer : Recently, the general awareness regarding
whether it is wise to create advertisement targeting children aroused among the
public. Some people believe that in order to increase the company’s sale, commercials
directed toward children should be displayed on the television. However, this is highly
disputable for two reasons: children could be highly influenced by the advertisement
and it could waste individuals’ money.
To begin
with, children could easily be influenced by television commercials. To be specific,
today’s technology is highly developed that a majority of households obtain
television. Because of this, children are used to watching televisions for
hours every day after school. While they watch television advertisement, they could
be exposed to inappropriate advertisements, which could lead them to become violent.
According to research conducted from the National Research Foundation of
Korea, seventy percent of children are unable to discern what is morally right
or wrong. Although there are numerous educational commercials, there is a myriad
of inappropriate advertisements prevailing on television. Due to this, children
imitate what is on television just because they find it entertaining. However, this
poses a serious problem because they do not know what is morally right or wrong,
so they could perform whatever was displayed on television albeit they are morally
wrong. Hence, television advertisement should not direct toward children.
Another reason that television should not target children for advertisement is that individuals
could waste their money. Because advertisement is meant to attract potential
customers, when children are exposed to commercials such as toy commercials,
they are highly likely to ask their parents to purchase those. For instance, there
was a study conducted by Seoul National University considering how many parents
order products from television for their children. Approximately eighty percent
of parents stated that they squander their money on children’s products advertised
on television. Although it is a good way to increase in the company’s sale, for the family who is financially struggling, it puts a heavy burden on the parents
because they cannot buy whatever their children desire or they would have to
spend unnecessary money unless their children watched the advertisement. Therefore,
advertisements that target children should be vanished.
In
conclusion, because children are enormously influenced by televisions, and
because the parents could waste hundreds of dollars, television commercials
should not target young children. Organizations should promote campaigns to increase
awareness of the negative effect of the television advertisement that is targeted toward
young children. |