Essay: Advertising's Impact On Teenagers - Positive And Negative Aspects.

Write an essay on advertising.

Television advertisements

Advertising is a very important aspect of this modern day scenario. This is because each and every industry has to carry on some or the other kind of advertisements because they have to reach out to their target audience. It is an important fact that in this modern 21^st century, the customers have become very conscious (Duffett 2016). It is for this reason that the companies have to hire some advertising agencies that will help them to advertise their products and then launch their products. For an instance, a cosmetic company will have to make an extensive advertisement of its product for the purpose of reaching to the mass target audience (Altberg 2018). However in this context, it has to be noted that just as a coin has two sides, there are two different sides of advertisement as well. There are both positive and negative aspects.

It is one of the most common medium or platform  of advertisement that is used by the teenagers. The positive aspect is that it helps in making people aware about the new products that are being launched into the market..Teenagers are the most vulnerable group of people who can be influenced by the effects of advertisement. Same is the case with advertisements.

A good example is the Nivea cream. As it is a cosmetic product the audiences will have to know about the benefits and the advantages that they will reap from the consumption of this product. So, in this case, it is evident that the customers will be seeing the advertisements for this product on different advertisement media. The customers will sure not take the risk of buying any particular product without getting to know about the correct information. However the negativity is that the advertisement can be too repetitive and can cause boredom among people.

This is one of the most popular advertisements in the modern day scenario. Teenagers are much attracted to this kind of advertisements because they spend most of their time browsing the internet in order to stay updated all the time. However the negative side is that it has an appeal to only a handful of audiences. People without proper internet connection will not be able to see the ads. On the other hand, some of the users might get irritated to see the pop ups every single time while they are working.

The hoardings, leaflets, moving vehicle advertisements are the different kinds of transit form of advertisement. This might be useful for people who may not be associated with the online browsing or watching television. So, they might find it easier to know about some newly launched products in the form of vehicle advertisements, posters, leaflets and other such forms A drawback of this form of advertisement is that it has a very narrow scope and limited information on it consequently Therefore people might dislike seeing such might be dislike to see such halfhearted information.

Online advertisements

One of the good impacts of advertising is that it helps the teenagers to stay updated about each and every product that is being launched around them. As a result of this, they are able to get all the necessary information about each and every kind of product before purchasing them. Thus, the advertisement campaigns are helpful as they help in keeping the people aware of the different properties of products before buying them. However, as per the opinion of Luke et al. (2017), it has to be noted that the ad agencies usually use psychological strategies in order to attract the attention of the teenagers. They usually target the teenagers as they are the most vulnerable among the targeted audiences (Sorbring 2014). Particularly there are many products like food, cosmetics, tobacco, alcohol and some other kinds of products that are more likely to have a very harmful impact on the minds of teenagers.

A good example is an advertisement for tobacco. It is said that the advertisements are more likely to make the teenagers addicted to smoking. The influence of the tobacco advertisements is much stronger than the influence of any other family member who has the habit of smoking. Same is the case with alcohol. The ad agencies usually portray the entire act of smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol in a very romanticized and heroic manner. They try to give a feeling that people who have the habit of consuming tobacco and alcohol are having an immensely smart, macho like appearance. This is likely to create a want or desire within the then teenagers to start adopting this practice. Thus, it can be said that advertisement of products likes tobacco and alcohol creates a very harmful impact on teenagers.

The other negative impact is the objectification or the commodification of the male and the female bodies. Often the advertisements create many stereotypes of the male and female bodies. A very common the practice that is being seen in the modern day advertisement is a six pack abs of the male figures. This might create a desire among teenagers to get such a  This will make them go for extreme kinds of physical activities that might harm them.

As per the opinion of Leas et al. (2015) advertisements on different medicines are really essential as it helps in making people aware of the new inventions taking place. There are people who might not be educated enough to read books or magazines (De Jans, Hudders and Cauberghe 2017).Thus it is through the television, hoardings or leaflets that they can get to know about the new inventions taking place around them. These advertisements turn out to be very helpful for a large number of people. However it has been argued by Barve et al. (2015) in the modern day scenario there are a large number of advertisements going on about contraceptive pills, sexual relationship, and others.

Transits

These kinds of advertisements are undoubtedly helpful for a large number of people. However, the rapid increase in the number of times these advertisements are shown, often create a harmful impact on the minds of the teenagers. As they are at a very vulnerable position of their life, they will naturally have a tendency to get attracted towards these kinds of advertisements (Asif and Nisar 2016). This might make them much addicted to televisions and this, in turn, will harm their academics. The other important thing to be noted in this context is that the advertisements are usually repeated for a large number of times over social media. This is really very annoying for many people. Thus, the advertisement agencies must make it a point that the same advertisements are not being repeated over and over again.

The cosmetic brands must be cautious enough while pairing up with the advertisement agencies and selecting the taglines for promoting their products. Nivea is one of the famous cosmetic brands that were criticized for using a certain tagline for the promotion of their range of products (Habel et al. 2016). This brand particularly embraced the white color and said that whatever is white is pure. This was criticized in many parts of the world because it condemned or hurt the sentiments of people who are of a different skin color or are of a dark complexion. If the advertisement is about some fairness cream this is likely to attract the attention of the teenager girls and boys very easily.

This is because the ad agencies promote the advertisement in such an attractive manner that the teenagers are usually carried away by this. The advertisements usually show that the usage of this fairness cream will turn a dark complexion person fair (Manski and Kottke 2015). This will turn an ugly person into a beautiful one. This is likely to create the desire of fitting in among the teenagers. The teenagers who are not having a very fair complexion might feel that they are falling back and start suffering from the feelings of depression and anxiety. Thus, this can create many harmful impacts on the minds of the teenagers.

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be said that there are both advantages and disadvantages of advertisements over teenagers. The advertisement agencies must make sure that the content of their advertisements is not having any harmful impacts on teenagers. The families also have to be alert about the programs that are being watched by their teenage kids.

References

Altberg, E., Faber, S., Hirson, R., Van der Linden, S., Lyon, B. H., and Manca, P. G. (2018). U.S. Patent No. 9,984,377. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Asif, R., and Nisar, S. (2016, October). Tender advertisement cost: Significant saving through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). In Information Communication and Management (ICICM), International Conference on (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Barve, G., Sood, A., Nithya, S. and Virmani, T., 2015. Effects of advertising on youth (age group of 13-19 years ago). J Mass Communication Journalism, 5(260), p.2.

De Jans, S., Hudders, L. and Cauberghe, V., 2017. Advertising literacy training: The immediate versus delayed effects on children’s responses to product placement. European Journal of Marketing, 51(11/12), pp.2156-2174.

Duffett, R.G., 2016. Effect of Instant Messaging Advertising on the Hierarchy?of?Effects Model Amid Teenagers in South Africa. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 72(1), pp.1-21.

Habel, J., Schons, L.M., Alavi, S. and Wieseke, J., 2016. Warm glow or extra charge? The ambivalent effect of corporate social responsibility activities on customers’ perceived price fairness. Journal of Marketing, 80(1), pp.84-105.

Leas, E.C., Myers, M.G., Strong, D.R., Hofstetter, C.R. and Al-Delaimy, W.K., 2015. Recall of anti-tobacco advertisements and effects on quitting behavior: results from the California smokers cohort. American journal of public health, 105(2), pp.e90-e97.

Luke, D.A., Hammond, R.A., Combs, T., Sorg, A., Kasman, M., Mack-Crane, A., Ribisl, K.M. and Henriksen, L., 2017. Tobacco town: computational modeling of policy options to reduce tobacco retailer density. American journal of public health, 107(5), pp.740-746.

Manski, R. and Kottke, M., 2015. A survey of teenagers’ attitudes toward moving oral contraceptives over the counter. Perspectives on sexual and reproductive health, 47(3), pp.123-129.

Sorbring, E., 2014. Parents’ concerns about their teenage children’s internet use. Journal of Family Issues, 35(1), pp.75-96.