The Social Consequences of TV Commercials
Today we find ourselves somewhat susceptible to the ads we see on television, but it wasn’t nearly the same as back in the day when we were young and naÃ?¯ve. Now a days we understand that the whole point of commercials are to get you to buy something and it almost becomes a spiteful thing that. Like we won’t go buy a product just because this company is trying to shove it down your throat. It’s like we’re saying “I know what you want me to do and you can’t tell me what to do. I’m my own person.” The thing is back when we were kids we didn’t really understand the point of these commercials and why the same commercials were always on while we were waiting for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to come back on. Now that we’re older we recognize what commercials are doing, but what do they do to the children now? The point of this is to find out what effects TV ads have on the way children see themselves and their parents, on how they see other races and what kind of impact commercials really make on a child’s life.
Parent-Child Relations
When we ended up not getting that special toy we would throw tantrums or just feel like you would “never get anything.” This is backed up by Buijzen and Valkenburg’s 2003 study “The Unintended Effects of Television Advertising.” There it is stated that “greater exposure to advertising causes children to subject their parents to purchase requests more often. When children do not receive the requested products, they may become disappointed.” (p. 486) It is fairly easy to see how these children would become disappointed. Television ads are made to sell a product. The ads are made to make said product look as good as it can and to make it seem like consumers, in this case the consumers are the children, need said product. If the ad’s message gets through to the consumer then that consumer will go out and buy it, but the consumer is a child and doesn’t have the means to go out and purchase said product so they go to their parents. The ad isn’t directed at the parent so they wouldn’t understand and in some cases refuse to buy the product for the child. If the child felt like they “needed” this product then they will be disappointed.
Stemming from the disappointment is life-dissatisfaction for the child. Usually these ads depict a world that is glorified by the product and everything around it seems like it is a better place since the product is around. Therefore, if the child is exposed to the ad enough they will feel their life does not measure up to the life they could have if they owned that product.
In this same cycle, the ads can also change how the children view their parents and can be directly correlated to conflict in the family. If the parents are unwilling or unable to buy the child whatever product they are asking for then the child will become disappointed and will feel like their parents aren’t providing for them the way they should be. The requests for the advertised products by the children could also lead to conflict in the family. The fact that children will constantly ask for things that the parents cannot or will not provide will eventually wear the parents patience thin or the child will be upset and the conflict will be caused by that. This is backed up once again by Buijzen and Valkenburg’s same 2003 study where it says, “âÂ?¦advertising exposure leads to an increased number of purchase requests that enhance parent-child conflict.” (p. 498)
The good thing that this study does suggest about the effects of advertising on children is that it can be lessened by the things the parents can do. In this same Buijzen and Valkenburg study it states, “Our findings show that the effects of advertising on children’s purchase requests, materialism, and parent-child conflict can be reduced by parental mediation of advertising (e.g., explaining the function of advertising and commenting on commercials) and by explaining consumer matters (e.g., teaching the child consumer skills and talking about purchase decisions).” (p.500)
Racial views and Advertising
Being a minority it was interesting for me to see all the Anglo kids having all the cool toys in the commercials. I would show up to some of my Anglo friend’s houses and expect them to have all the newest and greatest products that were being advertised. Sometimes they would have that product I was looking for and other times they wouldn’t, but the fact that I was looking for it specifically at their houses sets off a number of red flags about how strong these messages might be.
Since there were a number of things that were explained by the Buijzen and Valkenburg study, we can now assume that television ads do have great effects on the way children view their world.
In Larson’s 2002 study “Race and Interracial Relationships in Children’s Commercials,” the author sets out to find out how much the Anglo children and how much AHANA (African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American) children are portrayed in television ads and how they are both portrayed. The numbers showed that of the 592 commercials 42% showed only white children, 57% showed both white and AHANA children and 1% showed just AHANA children in the ad. In all of these commercials, there were 892 children (95% real, 5% animated), in those ads, 76% of them were white, and 24% were AHANA children (18% of the general population is AHANA). They found that the most commercials featuring a mixture of the two groups came in an outdoor setting while twice as many commercials featured the white children in an indoor/home setting.
The studies also showed that in these commercials that they were more likely to feature a white child alone than a commercial with white and AHANA children mixed together, and in those commercials that feature white and AHANA children they will be involved in some kind of competition or athletic play.
To make deductions based on the Buijzen and Valkenburg study mentioned earlier, that would mean these ads make a big impact on how children view children of other racial backgrounds. These commercials show that if there is one minority then there has to be another minority right there alongside them. It will also show children that there has to be a constant competition between the AHANA people and Anglos. This just perpetuates the ideals of segregation and promotes competition of all minorities against Anglos. These ideas are still seen today in a number of different areas. Being a minority, there is always that thought in the back of my head when I go for a interview for a job and an Anglo man is going up for the same job too. Instead of him being another person he becomes the Anglo competition. Sometimes there is the feeling of me against the majority of the world and commercials do play a role in perpetuating these thoughts in society.
Conclusion
There are a number of people in the world that will argue against the fact that the mass media and advertisements have little or no effect on adults. That may have some validity to it since we do understand what these ads are trying to do to us, but we were already trained when we were young on how to look at the world, so we may be looking at the world through tinted glasses.
If you have children or are around children on a regular basis you can very easily see how much of an effect the mass media has on the impressionable minds of children. Their information processing skills are limited, as well as their knowledge of how the world works, which makes them a great deal more susceptible to these ads.
We must take on the burden of creating a more media literate world. Explain to your children, younger siblings, cousins all about what the media is trying to do. If this trend continues we may end up in a world where independent thoughts are merely a thing of the past. So start today because you can tell one person, who will tell one person, who will tell one person and so on and so forth.
