Television Commercials Essay Example

style="text-align: justify;">Children have trouble extracting the essence from a verbal statement. Children, especially younger ones, cannot separate their reactions to the product advertised and the advertisement itself that is found on TV. Because children can remember a television commercial word for word or repeat slogans and jungles, one should not assume that they understand the meaning. (White, 1965) The mindset of children is different from ordinary individuals since their mentality is not yet fully developed or their mindset is completely distinct due to the generation gap between adults, teenagers, and children alike. Children under the age of 13 are very easy to manipulate since they have very few life experiences thus maximizing the use of television for their learning.

The media socializes and communicates with them with the great use of the television (Perse, 2001, p. 164-171). According to the Nielsen Media Research (1998), young children from the ages two to eleven watch television for about 22 hours per week, and these research findings on children are relatively high compared to the number of hours that adults and teenagers watch television. There are many other ways of socialization such as the family, church, school, and friends but media and especially the television is always readily available. The socializing capabilities of media and the television makes people learn from what they see. This becomes unquestionably true for children since they are the ones who are most affected on this to the point that they want to imitate whatever they see on TV (Perse, 2001, p. 164-171).

Children who are one to five years old are classified as pre-schoolers. Schneider Cy (1987) pointed out some

of their characteristics and that most of them cannot read yet since they are still in the process of learning on how to love. Moreover, they rely completely on their parents and educators which in the same way acts as their second parent. In addition to that, children in this age are highly stimulated by television and they are capable of watching it for hours regardless of the fact that they do not understand everything that they see and that they tend to rely more on visual representations of elements that are found on television and that watching television programs that are too long becomes difficult for the child to understand it. To illustrate, the reason why humorous cartoon shows are short is because children fails to compensate a certain TV program if it is too long. (Cy, 1987, p. 85) The shift of mentality of the children that are between the ages six and nine are not different from the mentality that they used to have when they were in the pre-schooloer stage.

According to Schneider Cy (1987), the children of this age are classified to watch television very often and that they spend the longest time in watching the television in comparison with the other age groups. It is also in these ages wherein a child realizes that he is no longer a baby. Consequently, the child starts to make decisions of his own and starts to gain maturity thus preparing him for the teenage years. (Cy, 1987, p. 85-86) The child in his pre-teen stage has a completely different mindset from the mindset that he started out with during his pre-schooler

years. In these ages, the child already has a mind of his own. Moreover, it is also in this stage wherein the influence of their parents starts to decline and the child starts to recognize other adult figures as an influence aside from their parents such as celebrities and other relatives that they find interesting. (Cy, 1987, p. 86)

According to Elizabeth M. Perse (2001), “Children adopt the role models of the media. They imitate the way television characters dress and do their hair; they want lunch boxes and Halloween costumes emblazoned with their favorite television characters. Coupled with other societal institutions, there is a good deal of concern about television’s potential negative effects in children’s knowledge about society.” (Perse, 2001, p. 165). As what Perse (2001) would put it, the television is capable of influencing the children in the way they act and respond to situations. (Perse, 2001, p. 164-171), this gives justice to the fact that the parents play a big role in supervising their children in watching television. The Role of the Parents to their Children

The roles of the parents are very vital to the growth and development of the child. Their duties over their children are set to be valid until the child is already able to leave their home and live by himself. What is equally important is the fact that the parents are to take care of their children starting from the infant years. However, some parents forget the important role that they have on their children and tend to leave them with a babysitter or a hired maid tasked to take care of their child.

In this case, the child no longer receives the proper discipline from a parent. Moreover, the child acquires supremacy over his baby sitter, which makes the child more prone in being influenced by watching television. (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006)

Dimitri A. Christakis and Frederick J. Zimmerman (2006) explained how early the child is influenced by the television. According to them, “A typical child born today will probably watch videos first, starting as early as 4 to 6 months old, often sitting in a car safety seat if she is unable to sit on her own. She will quickly graduate to a bewildering array if shows laden with stressful cartoon violence and commercialism, which she may start watching as early as 9 months old.” (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006, p. 5).

Parents are greatly involved in the television viewing of their children. It is one of their duties as parents and probably one of the qualities of a parent that a person must have in order to be called a good parent. (Lemish, 2007, p. 23).

According to dafna Lemish (2007), the types of involvement of a parent concerning the television watching of their children can be classified into three levels. “First, is the level of “awareness and co-viewing:” the degree to which parents are around during viewing, are familiar with the content of programs their children are viewing, offer their children role models of viewing habits, and even view with them. Second is the level of “supervision,” also termed “restrictive meditation,” which relates to the degree to which parents supervise and restrict the amount of television viewing of their children, viewing times and

viewing content, and use viewing as forms of reward or punishment; and to what degree do they monitor secondary viewing behaviors (e.g., dong homework or eating while viewing)? Finally, “instructive mediation” level relates to the degree to which the parents mediate between their children and the television content viewed – through conversation, explanation, value judgments, processing of emotions, understanding information, application of learning, critical evaluation and the like.” (Lemish, 2007, p. 23).

These three types of involvement of the parents – awareness, supervision, and instructive mediation – sometimes go against with the different attitudes of the parents. Opinions from different parents vary. Some may agree to let their children watch what they want and some may think that the television can destroy the life of their children. Others may see the television as a medium for entertainment, relaxation and stress-reliever. In addition to that, some parents would consider the television as a form of help for the education of the children since for the past few decades, educational television programs has been rampant worldwide. (Lemish, 2007, p. 24).

Knowing how early the influence of television starts and its bad effects on the children makes us focus on the problem. Elizabeth M. Perse (2001) made it clear that children are very easy to manipulate and make them believe on what they see. This is also one of the reasons of why advertisers of children’s product targets children in a visual manner since most children would care less on advertisements that require comprehensions. (Perse, 2001)

In spite of these deficiencies from the parents, some have taken action in providing guidance to their children whenever

they watch television. Most families worldwide have these set of rules and the elders of the household that tends to be the parents set out policies in their household that everybody must follow. One of these rules may contain things like, “no television beyond 10 pm” or “no watching of television on a weekday”. (Lemish, 2007, p. 22-26)

Despite the presence of these household rules, children tend not to follow them together with the same people who implement these rules. The reality of this is that there is a big possibility that the parents themselves are the ones breaking these rules for their children. These are the instances wherein the whole family is to watch a certain television program together. For instance, whenever the parents decide for their children that they should watch this certain television program together with them perhaps a favorite family show or a live telecast of a national event. (Lemish, 2007, p. 22-23).

It is always a desirable activity for the parents if they watch television together with their children. It is in these parent-guiding activities wherein the parents get to supervise their children of the programs they watch on television. It becomes their job to make their children understand the content of a certain television program and explain it to them in detail so as the child may understand and not misinterpret the message. Furthermore, it is also their job as parents to prevent their children from watching programs that may be threatening to their learning and development. The subtle act of trusting children at this age and letting them watch television at their own privacy goes against

the activity of watching television with them. (Lemish, 2007, p. 24). The Negative effects of Television to Children

The study of the United States Surgeon General’s Office (1969) states that all negative effects of the television to children clearly depend on the type of programs thay they watch. This study of the Surgeon General was later criticized and studied by other sociologists and psychologists and later on by other scientists from different fields. They have found out three different possibilities regarding the link between television and violence. (Cy, 1987, p. 78-82). Television has no significant relationship to aggressive behavior. Television reduces aggressive behavior.

Television causes aggressive behavior. (Cy, 1987, p. 78-82). Violence is not the only thing that needs to be given concern regarding the television’s influence on children. Latest research shows that that have found out new other ways where television influences children. Here are some of the thesis statements of research findings about the negative influence of television on children: Television is a passive medium; children passively absorb the information they get from television – violence, sex, commercials, etc. Television viewing decreases creativity in children.

Television viewing is an addictive behavior. (Cy, 1987) The Positive Effects of Television to Children Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman (2006) stated out some tips on how to make television work in the positive way for children. The parents play a vital role for children concerning television. The best thing that a parent can do to assure that their child is watching the proper programs is to supervise them while they are watching. In these ways of securing a child’s welfare from television, a certain

parent can help make use of the television for the benefit. (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006, p. 94-95)

For children ages 3-5, a parent must make them avoid programs that are somehow related to violence. Oftentimes, news programs can be good at depicting violence but although news channels can be very informative, it would be best not to make children watch these shows in the possibility of absorbing information regarding violence (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006). Children under the age of 13 are very much likely to watch cartoons and animations. The target of these kinds of television programs are children since they are the only ones who seem to be entertained by the type of comic and humor that cartoons and animations give. However, there are some cartoons that depict violence that must be avoided by the parents for their children to watch. It would be best to make them watch channels that are informative in a way that would contribute to the learning of the child. (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006).

Once the child reaches the age of 5-10, they become more mature that they were compared to when they were in pre-schooling stage. In this stage, the child is now able to convey his feelings and insights. He can already cite what is wrong and what is correct. However, it would still be best if a parent could watch over her child. (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006). For children 11 years old and up, they are now pre-entering adolescent stage wherein they become more emotional than they were before. This given fact of growing up still does not exclude the parent from watching over

the shoulder of her child. They can now watch horror and action movies but it would be best if the certain child can watch it with the complete supervision of the parents. (Christakis and Zimmerman, 2006).

Conclusion and Summary

The television has everything. Moreover, it contains different things vital for the human person. It is capable of altering the minds of individuals and on the same way, it is capable of making a person learn. The television can be used in two ways: the positive and the negative way. The positive way of using the television is when a person makes use of it with the intent to learn something new since the television may also be a source of knowledge that may come in helpful for the person.

The negative way of using the television is when a person watches a television program and then tends to be manipulated with what he watched. The negative way is oftentimes true for the youth but it is even more true for the children under the age of 13 since teenagers already have their own mindset and attitudes towards things and that their level of maturity is different from that of the children under 13.