Advertisement: Advertising and Media Literacy Education Essay

Children cannot escape them. They stare at them from every nook and corner. The highways, the roadways, streets all have hoardings, banners, posters screaming about the goodness of the product they are advertising. Newspapers have columns and columns, pages and pages devoted to advertisements. Greatest curse of modern times for children is advertisements. Advertisement reminds the children to buy new things and no wonder they are brainwashed and pester their parents to buy it for them. However, advertisement is a good way to tell about the products. They inform the children about new technology or trend. Similarly, advertising may also have a negative impact on today’s youth. Junk food ads encourage children to eat unhealthy food, which is often portrayed as fun. See more: Defining research problem and setting objectives Essay Another advantage of advertising is it gives media literacy education. Children need to know that they are being bombarded by messages (both good and bad) every day. They need to be taught how to discern these messages from an early age and to decide how to react to the messages. They also teach them other good things. In addition, advertising is making children feel that without their product, you’re a loser. Kids are very sensitive to that. They become most emotionally vulnerable. Advertisement also educates children and is very informative. How would children cope without news and catching up with what goes around in the society? For instance, sometimes kids do not understand what the commercial is about and they are not yet fully developed. If they see something that is not appropriate then they will start telling other kids of their age which is not okay for them. Kids are exposed to things that can be misunderstood and take things negatively. What is more is that the advertisements targeting children’s aim to promote the products and services, which cater for children’s needs and have no damaging intention at all. Overall, I believe that advertising has both advantages and disadvantages. However I believe that in most cases the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. I do believe that ads should be more strictly monitored, especially during children’s viewing hours. Harsher penalties should apply to people who infringe any laws and more people should be hired to patrol exactly what is played on ads. Children see, children do.