Informal Blog Task - Week 5: Children and Advertising

How far do you think advertising influences children’s perceptions of themselves?

Gunter, Oates and Blades (2005) argue children are exposed to a large amount of advertisements every day. Therefore, I believe that to some extent advertising does influence children’s perceptions of themselves. However, these perceptions can be challenged for example, traditionally women were seen as ‘home makers’, staying at home looking after their family, whereas men were the ‘breadwinners’ going to work and providing for their family. However, as times have changed men and women’s roles can interchange. To contextualise this example to the question in hand, De Chenecey (1999) argues that the typical traditional gender and family roles are still mostly shown in advertisements, for example women doing washing up advertisements. Although it depends on how the child interprets advertisements to influencing perceptions about themselves.     

In conclusion, there are many more different factors where advertising can influence children’s perceptions of themselves, such as, body image, their interests and gender roles; the toys advertised for boys might be different, to the toys that should be played with by girls. As a result of this, advertisements reinforce stereotypes for example, between boys and girls.

Should children be viewed as consumers?

There are two different definitions of what a consumer is, in relation to this question, I am going to discuss children only using the products that are brought for them, and not buying and using them which would be the other definition of what a consumer is. I believe that to some extent children should be viewed as consumers, because parents need to understand and listen to what their children want, in order to purchase products that interest their children, for example what they want for their birthday. In addition to this, there are lots of adverts that are aimed at children of products that children should be using or playing with.

I believe that young people to some extent are passively persuaded through adverts to have products that they don’t need. Although, young people should have this right and be viewed as consumers because at the end of the day children are people like adults and they should be exposed to products that are aimed at them to decide if they want the product.

Should children learn about advertising in school and if so, what do teachers need to understand about the way in which children engage with advertising?

I strongly believe that children should learn about advertising in school, because in the seminar we discussed that children need to understand the purpose of adverts, in order to make judgements about products. In addition to this in Key Stage 2, children start to learn about persuasive writing, and learning about adverts is a great way of learning how to write persuasively (Department for Education and Skills. 2006).

Teachers need to understand the extent to which children engage in advertising, in other words how much they are influenced in adverts, which could differ according to their age (Banaji, 2010). Therefore, teachers need to understand and learn from their children of what they know about advertising and how they engage with adverts, and what they think of adverts, because they will have different cultural experiences of adverts as children are from different backgrounds so may experience different adverts.

 

Bibliography

Banaji, S. (2010) ‘Analysing Advertisements in the Classroom’ in Bazelgette, C. (Ed) Teaching Media in Primary Schools London: Sage Publications Ltd.

De Chenecey, S. (2000) ‘The Cellular Family at the Millennium’ Young Consumers: Insight and Ideas for Responsible Marketers, 1 (4) pp333-337. [online]  http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1648566&show=pdf (Accessed 12.02.2014)

Department for Education and Skills. (2006) Primary Framework for literacy and mathematics. [pdf] Available from: http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/pdfs/2006-primary-national-strategy.pdf (Accessed: 12.02.14).

Gunter, B., Oates, C., & Blades, M. (2005) Advertising to Children on TV: Content, Impact, and Regulation Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: New Jersey.