'Children and Television' Gunter and McAleer Ch 9

In this chapter there is a great deal of information about how children are effected by advertising. It also telles us how people have tried to find out whether it does or not and also how they have tried to stop it. For instance there are controls over advertising on television, by the IBA, that there are times of the day and certain channels that cannot advertise particular products such as alcohol or cigarettes, as these are times or places that children are watching television. Some more points that i found from this book that relate to my study are:

• Some children acnnot distinguish between television programmes or adverts as they blend together forming a montage that children cannot make sense of.
• Children pressure their parents into buying the products they see advertised and many younger children believe that all adverts tell the truth. This changes as the children get older as they realise that they do not and also they feel less need to get the product. Also the time spent watching adverts changes from different age groups and sexes. For instance younger children cannot differentiate between adverts and programmes so they may turn when adverts are on and not see them. As they get older they watch more adverts but not necessarily believing they are true or feeling a need to purchase that particular product. When they approach teen years it has been discovered that girls are more attentive to adverts than boys.
• It has also been discovered that it depends where watching the adverts take place as the setting can produce different effects whilst watching them.
• Children remember more adverts as they get older and so this is another reason why the adverts are so successful in getting children, or their parents, to buy the products for them.
• Girls have been shown to know what the advets are doing whilst boys have been shown not too.
• In one investigation people tried to find out what adverts were most succesul in getting the children, or parents, to buy the product and these three main products dominated the purchases:- My little pony, Transformers and Barbie. The next four most common were Care Bears, Star Wars, Cindy and He Man.