The Harmful Impacts of Tv Advertising

In the past, "word of mouth" was the most widespread form of advertising. Still, people also used Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising. Today, advertising is developing even more. To get to the consumer, advertisers use a broad variety of media. The most popular media are television, newspapers, radio, magazines, Yellow Pages, direct mail, and the Internet. However, "TV commercials are considered the most effective mass market advertising format" (www.wikipedia.com). In fact, television advertising has a major, but harmful impact on individuals and on society.

First of all, television advertising has dangerous impacts on individuals in a society. More precisely, the effect of television on young children has caught much attention. In fact, "Research suggests that children see television advertising as just another form of programming and react uncritically to its messages, which makes them especially vulnerable to advertising" (www.google.com). Ads addressed to young kids can strongly affect their moral norms, values, and beliefs. Materialistic attitudes, conflicts in family and bad eating problems can easily be the effects of advertising on individuals. In fact, the materialistic attitude can be clearly observed in the way teenager girls react to advertising that presents beautiful, skinny models like in shampoo commercials for example (sunsilk, herbal essences…). These girls may think that being beautiful and thin is the only way to be popular so they can manage their lives in such a way to achieve this goal, which can also lead to some eating disorders in pursuit to a thin figure. Recent studies indicate that adolescent boys are also being swayed by advertising images of bulked-up, buffed bodies (www.google.com). Thus, a lot of them become displeased from their own body image and therefore they may dedicate a lot of time to weightlifting, and even they may take drugs in order to gain more muscles.

Advertising also encourages a...