Children are common targets of advertisements as they are easily persuaded. This, unfortunately, may lead to unnecessary spending and bad eating habits, which can be mitigated through several ways.
Adverts’ main purpose is to paint a product as interesting as possible to manipulate people into buying them, despite not needing it. Whereas adults generally have better self-control and analytical thinking to ignore the temptation, children do not. Thus, when they whine to their parents to buy them something, this creates unnecessary spending for the whole family. For instance, when children see mobile phone commercials, they might get enticed to ask for it, despite not needing it at all. Furthermore, fast food or snack advertisements, which usually easily attracts children, might promote unhealthy diet as they lead children to crave them and instead not consume healthy food.
These problems, however, can be solved through 2 main ways. First, as children nowadays tend to view these commercials through electronic devices such as mobile phones and televisions, setting a limit to their exposure to these devices each week would be a wise move. This way, the probability of kids looking at these commercials will be much lower. Simultaneously, their parents should give their children an understanding of what adverts are, their purpose, and why we should not fully trust them as they aren’t always true and are typically exaggerated. If this mindset is reinforced throughout their childhood, there is no doubt that they would be more careful when coming across an advert.
Overall, targeting children for advertisements can encourage them to buy unnecessary things and lead unhealthy diets, but this can be prevented by limiting screen time as well as explaining the purpose and harms of advertisement.