Exploitative Commercials in Children’s TV Programming Essay -- Media T

Alcohol. Obesity. Violence. For kids today in the United States, these are only a hardly a(prenominal) of the problems linked to the child-targeted mass media, especially the multi- million dollar business tv commercials in childrens programming. With the disappearance of a TV-free environment, a typical American kid sees about 40,000 television advertisements each year, most of which are for soda, candy, icon games, fast food and their free toys. In order to collect rough information, I sat down on a Saturday morning on July 16, 2004, and recorded several kids TV ads for further analysis. Needless to say, the results were quite scandalousaside from the obvious, I also noticed that most ads featured bustling and aggressive boys while the presence of girls was rarely to be seen. Being a girl myself, I felt the need to take a conclusion look at such inequality. I began to wonder if commercialism has overlooked the importance of gender issues, which would then create negative impacts on children by sending out libelous hidden messages. For example, these ads can promote a polarization of gender roles that portray the sexes in stereotypical and traditional ways, which allow for unconsciously affect young viewers attitudes and values. In his article create verbally in 1988, What Are TV Ads Selling to Children, John J. OConnor asserts, Things seaportt changed much in the television business of childrens merchandising, and most aspects of the scene are even more appalling. Indeed, though not as prevalent as in earlier years, TV commercials aimed at kids let off contain underlying themes such as sexism thats extremely harmful to the development of the youth. Stereotypical images permeate kids television commercials, giving young chi... ...eyre being preached of becoming the gentle, pretty, sensitive and domesticated dream-girls who are submissive to boys. It is as if females lives revolve around males. On the other hand, boys tend t o get the unconventional impression that men have to be physically strong, competitive, rational and schoolmaster to women. As illustrated by stereotypes, roles, and representation, boys always seem to be the winner in the unequal gender portrayal on kids TV commercials. Many kids bear witness to emulate such characteristics from role-models they see on the screen, which can be actually misleading and harmful, for they hinder the development of childrens innate talents and abilities. As OConnor indicates, Commercials in childrens programming are exploitative and a disservice to society. contempt recent improvement, sexism remains to be a major problem in the child-targeted commercialism.