Advertising has become an integral part of modern society, because of its wide reach, advertising can strongly affect everyone’s choices and actions. As a result, many consumers tend to buy things impulsively and their decisions can also be easily manipulated. This essay will discuss these main effects of advertising.
One common effect of advertising is impulse buying, where people purchase things quickly without much thought. This happened due to many ads have a catchy and well-designed, they create strong emotions and a sense of urgency, thus, it makes people feel excited so they buy things without careful consideration. To mitigate this problem, it is important to improve people’s advertising literacy, when consumers understand the tricks behind ads, they can make better choices. For example, in Australia, media education in schools helps students recognize how ads try to influence them, which helps them make better decisions.
Another important effect of advertising is that it manipulates people’s decisions and behavior. Advertisements often use celebrities and attractive images to connect products with happiness or success. Because of this, many people buy things just to follow trends or feel accepted, even when they don’t really need them. Children are also easy targets of advertising and may pressure their parents to buy more items. To adress these issues, governments should apply censorship to control misleading or harmful ads. For instance, the UK has laws banning false advertising and protecting children from unfair marketing.
This essay discussed that impulse buying and manipulation of decisions are two main negative effects of advertising. These problems can be solved by raising awareness about advertising and implementing censorship on misleading advertisements.