Advertising effects on behavior

Abstract

While forms of advertising have been documented for centuries, attempts to promote products and services directly to youth have grown with the increased economic power of children and adolescents and the advent of newer media technologies. Digital technologies have enabled “stealth” advertising, such as advergames and native ads, which appear to children as entertainment content. Academic research largely supports causal links between children's advertising exposure and certain forms of behavior, including requesting, purchasing, and consuming advertised products. Such research has documented intended effects of advertising on children, including children's selection or requests to parents for advertised products, as well as unintended effects such as parent-child conflict. Particularly concerning are associations between exposure to unhealthy food advertising and children's status as overweight or obese. Effects of advertising are moderated by factors regarding the advertising content (e.g., repetition), individual child (e.g., cognitive development), and context of exposure (e.g., peer socialization). Efforts to protect children from unwanted effects of advertising have included government regulation and industry self-regulation, promotion of parental mediation, and child media literacy training. These strategies have been largely inconsistent and controversial and lack sufficient research bases guiding their development and verifying their efficacy.