Advertising to Children

Should We Advertise to Children?(After reading the story about Kwedit)

            Kwedit.com, a website that helps people to purchase virtual goods online without using credit or debit cards. People can buy what they want online by promising to pay for the items later. Some critics blame it for targeting young kids as audiences. However, some people think it is normal for the capitalistic society according to the capitalistic values. In fact, not only Kwedit face this problem, and many advertisements may involve this critical problem. It urges us to think about some questions. How may advertisements influence children? What kind of products can target children as their audiences in their advertisements? And as the book Media Ethics pointed out, “Should we advertise to children at all?”

This issue is a little like the tobacco issue. It is no doubt that tobacco is totally bad for health. However raising and sale of tobacco can make money.  The Federal Trade Commission does not prohibit raising and sale of tobacco but forbid the advertisements of it and requires cigarette companies to put warning labels on packages. So I believe advertising to children should not be prohibited completely but we should make some restrictions and rules for it. Why advertising to children should not be prohibited? It indeed has some good influences. First, it contributed to the development of economy. We live in the capitalistic society and the development of economy is a crucial part of development of society. Advertising to children is the requirement of the rule of market economy. Second, some advertisements are good for children and can help to cultivate children’s personalities. For example, if the Kwedit.com has a serious system requires parents involved it may really teach children and help them to grow up. Another example, some Disney advertisements teach children to be brave, virtuous, honesty, and upright， although the enterpriser’s original intention is to make profit. Why advertising to children should be restricted? Children are inexperienced, immature and susceptible, so they are easy to be misled. For example, Dr. Paddock’s research Ads Influence Children’s Food Choices suggests “watching advertisements influences children's food choices.” And “parental influence is not as strong as the researchers expected” . So the advertisements of some junk food like fries, fried chicken can easily have bad effects on children’s health. However advertisements also can influence children positively if they promote healthy food like fruits and vegetables. The Kwedit.com also can have good effects on children. The problem is that it does not have a sound system to ensuring parents are involved. Complete rules may help to solve these problems. Rules can forbid junk food advertisements and promote advertisements of healthy food instead of forbidding advertising to children at all.  Rules can require companies like Kwedit.com to complete their system to protect children instead of prohibiting them thoroughly. It gives us a win-win result: the capitalists make profits, the economy is promoted; at the same time children are protected and even get some help from the advertisements.