Help Age
TV Brainwashed To Lifestyles Of Alcohol & Cigarettes Video
by rosaryfilms (Category: News & Politics)
Brainwashed By Television To The Lifestyle Of Alcohol And Cigarettes.
Alcohol, cigarettes, and television: Brainwashed to the lifestyle; just want to be free.
Public domain images from the Prelinger Archives edited over a 1979 indie rock song by Mazanti (Hooksong).
Producer: Mazanti; Keywords: addiction; television; commercials; rock music; Creative Commons license: Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States.
Advertising is a pervasive influence on children and adolescents.
Young people view more than 40,000 ads per year on television alone and increasingly are being exposed to advertising on the Internet, in magazines, and in schools.
This exposure may contribute significantly to childhood and adolescent obesity, poor nutrition, and cigarette and alcohol use.
Media education has been shown to be effective in mitigating some of the negative effects of advertising on children and adolescents.
Several European countries forbid or severely curtail advertising to children; in the United States, on the other hand, selling to children is simply “business as usual.”1 The average young person views more than 3000 ads per day on television (TV), on the Internet, on billboards, and in magazines.2 Increasingly, advertisers are targeting younger and younger children in an effort to establish “brand-name preference” at as early an age as possible.
This targeting occurs because advertising is a $250 billion/year industry with 900 000 brands to sell, and children and adolescents are attractive consumers: teenagers spend $155 billion/year, children younger than 12 years spend another $25 billion, and both groups influence perhaps another $200 billion of their parents’ spending per year.
Increasingly, advertisers are seeking to find new and creative ways of targeting young consumers via the Internet, in schools, and even in bathroom stalls.
Research has shown that young childrenâyounger than 8 yearsâare cognitively and psychologically defenseless against advertising.
They do not understand the notion of intent to sell and frequently accept advertising claims at face value.
In fact, in the late 1970s, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held hearings, reviewed the existing research, and came to the conclusion that it was unfair and deceptive to advertise to children younger than years.
What kept the FTC from banning such ads was that it was thought to be impractical to implement such a ban.
However, some Western countries have done exactly that: Sweden and Norway forbid all advertising directed at children younger than 12 years, Greece bans toy advertising until after 10 PM, and Denmark and Belgium severely restrict advertising aimed at children.
Children and adolescents view 400 00 ads per year on TV alone.
This occurs despite the fact that the Children’s Television Act of 1990 (Pub L No.
101–437) limits advertising on children’s programming to 10.5 minutes/hour on weekends and 12 minutes/hour on weekdays.
However, much of children’s viewing occurs during prime time, which features nearly 16 minutes/hour of advertising.
A 30-second ad during the Super Bowl now costs $2.3 million but reaches 80 million people.
A 2000 FTC investigation found that violent movies, music, and video games have been intentionally marketed to children and adolescents.16 Although movie theaters have agreed not to show trailers for R-rated movies before G-rated movies in response to the release of the FTC report, children continue to see advertising for violent media in other venues.
For instance, M-rated video games, which according to the gaming industry’s own rating system are not recommended for children younger than 17 years, are frequently advertised in movie theaters, video game magazines, and publications with high youth readership.
Also, movies targeted at children often prominently feature brand-name products and fast food restaurants.18 In 1997–1998, 8 alcohol companies placed products in 233 motion pictures and in 1 episode or more of 181 TV series.
