Unintended Effects

Although each advertisement may have as its primary purpose the goal of promoting product sales, the cumulative effect from children’s long-term exposure to television advertising may exert far broader sociological influence. Some researchers have argued that one of the long-term effects of children’s exposure to commercials is an increase in materialistic attitudes, although this is particularly difficult to establish because few children in the United States grow up without extensive media exposure, and thus no control group is available for comparative purposes. In other areas, however, several unintended effects of advertising have been more convincingly demonstrated.

One of the most visible of these unintended effects is the influence of television advertising on children’s eating habits. Commercials for candies, snacks, sugared cereals, and fast foods represent a large proportion of the advertising that is presented during children’s programs, while advertising for more healthy or nutritious foods is rare. Consequently, children tend to develop poor nutritional habits, mistakenly assuming that the products that they see advertised are an appropriate diet whenever they are hungry.

Advertisements for alcoholic beverages such as beer products, even though they are not intended for children, are nonetheless seen by many young viewers. Exposure to alcohol advertising exerts influence on young people’s alcohol expectancies (e. g. when it is appropriate to drink; what happens when one drinks), which have in turn been shown to predict drinking behaviors later in life.

Another important area of unintended effects involves parent-child conflicts that emerge when children’s purchase-influence attempts are refused. Parents obviously cannot honor all purchase requests that are triggered by television advertising. Studies have shown that a majority of children become angry, disappointed, or argumentative when purchase requests are denied. The frequent purchase requests that are associated with children’s heavy exposure to television advertising may place a strain on parent-child interaction at times, an issue of consequence largely because of the sheer volume of commercials that are viewed by most children.