How Does Television Affect Today's Youth?

The effects of television on today’s youth

Kenneth McDougald

COM/156

The effects of television on today’s youth vary based on the programming, advertising, and games that they are subjected to. This is important for many reasons, primarily the fact that many parents use televisions as a type of babysitter for their children. There are a couple of television networks, Nick Jr and PBS are the most notable, which provide great educational programming without the fear of inappropriate advertising. On the other side, networks like Cartoon Network show suggestive advertising geared towards the teenage demographic and commonly portray a fair amount of violence. It is important to understand what effects, negative and positive, these networks and the advertisements found on them can have on children.

The way a child responds to a television ad is based on their developmental stage. This fact has brought about the creation of the Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU). CARU is a self regulated group that monitors ads directed at children under the age of 12 and works with advertisers to make changes where needed (Brocato, Gentile, Laczniak, Maier, & Ji-Song, 2010). CARU has a set of guidelines in place for advertisers to follow, but there are questions if these guidelines are being followed. Some studies have shown that advertisements during Saturday morning cartoons have been showing more violence than the cartoons themselves.

Advertisements for such things like video games are getting increasingly more violent because the product is becoming increasingly more violent. No more are the days of “kid games” when it comes to the major platforms. Sony and Microsoft are leading the way with their next generation consoles. Sony has the Playstation and Microsoft has the Xbox. With the technological advances in the hardware and software, game creators are able to create more realistic environments and experiences. The issue is that many of their ad campaigns are...