Introduction
Advertising has become an integral part of every person’s life. Teenagers can also see advertisements on the street, hear on the radio, watch on their smartphones or TV. Every year, advertising is being researched more deeply, and advertisers are using more powerful techniques that affect people’s behavior. Due to their age characteristics, it is especially true of adolescents, who are characterized by increased excitability, impulsivity, imbalance, and the commission of rash actions and deeds. Advertising has a substantial impact on the formation and development of attitudes towards the world and reality and the personal relationships of adolescents since it is at this age that the psyche is formed, which is most susceptible to external influences (Beyens et al., 2). Advertising is dynamic both in its essence and in its development. In this regard, it is necessary to study its influence on adolescents, as one of the leading groups subject to advertising tricks.
Influence
Advertising begins to influence children as soon as they are in front of the TV for the first time. Kids are attracted by the spectacular video sequence, incendiary sounds, flickering pictures, as well as excessive positive. Over time, children who watch ads are less likely to stay on the television (Lapierre et al., 152). This number decreases several times by adulthood, but adolescents still see advertising quite often in adolescence. The opinion is firmly established in society that a fragile child’s psyche cannot defend itself against sophisticated marketing moves. Indeed, due to inexperience, schoolchildren are not yet able to resist the tempting promises of PR campaigns. In this regard, many psychologists call for regulation of advertising that harms children. Among the features of such influence are corruption, the need to possess expensive goods despite the possibilities of the family budget, and the imposition of consumer values instead of the generally accepted cultural values.
In modern times, teenagers are increasingly beginning to get acquainted with smartphone devices. Inside the gadget, they are attracted by the touch screen, a vast number of applications for every taste, including, of course, games. Almost every game on any smartphone contains ads. The aggressiveness and cunning with which advertisers approach advertisements on the Internet and in-app always negatively impact the teenager, even if he has a high level of advertising literacy. For watching commercials, young players can often receive some bonuses in the game, and therefore the viewing of advertisements by adolescents with the departure of the popularity of television not only did not decrease but increased.
It can be argued that a modern child receives from various sources more than a dozen advertisements per day. They have a powerful influence on the behavior of the younger generation. They shape their worldview, cause cravings for certain products and lifestyles. Along with the parents and the school, children are brought up hourly by an absolute authority – advertising. The eternal “engine of commerce” deliberately cultivates and maintains false dissatisfaction in them in order to fill it with necessary needs.
On the one hand, advertising, being a simplified pattern of behavior, gives the child the opportunity to develop. He constantly masters the stereotype of adult behavior, and games and fairy tales help him in this. In fairy tales, children are offered solutions to what is right and what is not and how to act in certain situations. Through play, children develop their behavioral scenarios. Advertising in the perception of a child is a synthesis of a game and a fairy tale. An important place in the development of a child is occupied by aesthetic feelings: feelings of the beautiful and ugly, a sense of harmony, a sense of rhythm, a sense of the comic. At this age, the child begins to navigate concepts such as truth and lies. However, advertising images can disrupt the child’s correct understanding of such concepts.
In addition, on the other hand, the effect of the influence of advertising is not only psychological but also physical. Advertising negatively affects the health of children and adolescents. A fragile organism is affected by radiation from the screen, the flickering of bright color spots, and frequent images changes. Flickering pictures negatively affect the visual apparatus, the work of the heart and brain, and the frequent change of the image weakens attention. Nevertheless – advertising persistently teaches people to consume harmful goods. In addition, the rapid change of video frames, changing the image scale and good power, freeze frames, and audiovisual special effects traumatize the nervous system and cause increased excitability in young children. All these effects persist in a particular form and are manifested in adolescents’ excessive impulsivity and aggressiveness (Lapierre et al., 154). Advertising hurts personal development. The ideals of beauty, life goals, and being are imposed, which are extremely far from reality. Nevertheless, they are forced to strive for this, to compare themselves with the “ideal.” Consciousness is gradually turning into a repository of stereotypes.
Advertising keeps pace with technology development, and its mechanisms have achieved tremendous success on the Internet. The phenomenon of contextual advertising is truly a breakthrough in this field, showing teens products and services according to their preferences. Despite the prevailing ad-dissatisfaction viewpoint, adolescent PPC responses have been generally positive, according to research, despite some personal data breaches (Walrave et al., 599). In addition, due to the widespread use of advertising in information technology, which children are now immersed in from an early age, the term advertising literacy was introduced. Researchers are examining the ability of adolescents to distinguish between different types of advertising, including sponsored videos, when famous people actively advertise a product without making a familiar video out of it. Research data has shown that adolescents who successfully identify advertising can resist the psychological effects of advertising and subsequently refuse to purchase dubious importance (De Jans, Cauberge, Hudders, 320). In addition, the attractiveness of shopping is often influenced by the teenager’s upbringing, the influence of peers, and the financial well-being of the family. By shopping online, a teenager develops his e-commerce skills and understands how modern technology works. However, he must remain under the supervision of the parents, who monitor their child’s online activities.
Teenagers, like children, tend to have a more flexible memory, which is not yet crammed with a lot of knowledge and things. Viewing ads fills this niche much better than adults. However, research shows that, in addition to better brand memory, adolescents are better at recognizing the intention of the advertiser’s persuasion without giving in so much (Van Reijmersdal et al. 328). Also, teenagers dealing with different multimedia marketing sources have a higher advertising literacy, recognizing its moves. Even now, among adolescents, the most popular point of view is precisely the negative attitude towards advertising, which has only been supported over the years by moral and cognitive literacy (De Jans, Cauberge, Hudders, 322). The dynamics of resistance to advertising among adolescents has quite positive prospects, excluding rash purchases, consumer-style of thinking and develops immunity to any cunning marketing moves.
However, several problems describe the integration of advertising into the adolescent culture. Increasingly, marketing makes its way into cinema, the art of music, in which it manifests itself both in a hidden and quite an explicit form. Teen idols, including actors, video bloggers, gamers, and artists, face any teen-focused brand. Unfortunately, this brand does not always advertise something harmless. Typically, the promotion of alcohol, e-cigarettes, unhealthy diets, and carbonated drinks becomes part of the adolescent’s admiration (Padon et al., 955). This kind of advertising can be found on the Internet, where it is more difficult to control it by government agencies or the law. In addition, these brands often have significant financial capabilities and, therefore, can make more catchy, attractive advertising. The visual appearance of the commercial and the brightness of the brand play a more critical role in adolescents’ perception, overshadowing the immediate need for the advertised product or service (Murphy, 2181). Having some pocket money, teenagers can spend it not on their lunch or exciting things for a hobby, but the advertised product.
The landscape of the online environment is a vast field for advertisers and an opportunity to earn money for the holder of various resources and sites. State policy does not have time to regulate at the legislative level the placement of certain advertisements on various sites, which teenagers can easily access. As a solution to this problem, in addition to increasing the advertising literacy of young people, it is proposed to intervene in the case of parents, and not with an unambiguously negative point of view on questions about advertising, but in the form of a critical discussion with the active involvement of the adolescent (Lapierre et al., 154). However, it is not always the case that adults have the necessary level of advertising literacy to share knowledge with a teenager. Recognition of advertisements, even hidden ones, is a fundamental goal that will be useful to any person in the modern world. The development of this ability, as early as adolescence, is exceptionally conducive to critical thinking, the ability to resist ubiquitous marketing and evaluate information from different points of view.
Conclusion
Young people are active participants in the advertising process. As advertising affects adolescents and their behavior, new habits that change over time also affect advertising. Many of them agree with its negative impact but continue to fall for various marketing gimmicks and follow the example of idols or brand brightness. Advertising literacy can help develop critical thinking in adolescents, but this skill often requires the intervention of an authority figure. Internet advertising is also a double-edged sword. Teenagers are pretty loyal to contextual advertising based on recommendations regarding their data. On the other hand, aggressiveness and various types of fraud, propaganda of bad habits, and unacceptable goods for teenagers, whose advertisements are difficult to track on the global network, have an unconditional negative impact, which often cannot be stopped by either parents or teenagers themselves. The quickness of the mind and the easy accessibility of technology to modern children, as always, carries many dangers that can either temper the fledgling mind of a teenager or cause unavoidable psychological damage, including trauma.
Works Cited
Beyens, Ine, et al. “The effect of social media on well-being differs from adolescent to adolescent.” Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-11.
De Jans, Steffi, Veroline Cauberghe, and Liselot Hudders. “How an advertising disclosure alerts young adolescents to sponsored vlogs: The moderating role of a peer-based advertising literacy intervention through an informational vlog.” Journal of Advertising, vol. 47, no. 4, 2018, pp. 309-325.
Lapierre, Matthew A., et al. “The effect of advertising on children and adolescents.” Pediatrics, vol. 140, Supplement 2, 2017, pp. S152-S156.
Murphy, Gráinne, et al. “See, like, share, remember: Adolescents’ responses to unhealthy-, healthy-and non-food advertising in social media.” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 17, no. 7, 2020, p. 2181.
Padon, Alisa A., et al. “A randomized trial of the effect of youth appealing e-cigarette advertising on susceptibility to use e-cigarettes among youth.” Nicotine and Tobacco Research, vol. 20, no. 8, 2018, pp. 954-961.
Van Reijmersdal, Eva A., et al. “This is advertising! Effects of disclosing television brand placement on adolescents.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, vol. 46, no. 2, 2017, pp. 328-342.
Walrave, Michel, et al. “Like or dislike? Adolescents’ responses to personalized social network site advertising.” Journal of Marketing Communications, vol. 24 no. 6, 2018, pp. 599-616.