Advertising is everywhere in our modern
world. Wherever you care to look, you can find advertisements for an unimaginable variety of products. Ads play on
the Internet and television, they show up in newspapers and magazines, and they
decorate our cities as billboards and signs. Advertising has become so prevalent, in fact, that many people
now feel it needs to be regulated.
These people worry about the false messages and materialistic tone of many advertisement. Another serious concern
is the negative influence that advertising has on children.
Advertisements
can give false messages to people. The main purpose of advertisements is to persuade people to buy things, so they
are often misleading. They are often
untruthful and promise things that are unrealistic
or cannot happen. Many times, people will see an advertisement and think that using
the advertised product will make them feel better. Unfortunately, this is
usually not the case, and many people end up wasting money because of the false
messages conveyed by advertisements.
Advertisements
can also be very harmful to society. They make people want things that they don’t
necessarily need, so people may
become more materialistic. This can
make people selfish, and advertisements
can make them feel bad or inferior for
not owning a product. As a result, people waste vast amounts of money for material things that they don’t really
need. Advertisements make people forget about important values and they create
a materialistic society in which people constantly focus on superficial things.
Advertisements
also have a very bad influence on children. Young children do not know that an advertisement’s
purpose is to sell. So, they see advertisements and are easily convinced that
they want what was advertised. This is because advertisements make their
products look exciting and desirable,
or they make it seem like having or using a certain product will make a person
more interesting and popular. Therefore, advertisements for cigarettes,
alcohol, and unhealthy foods are obviously not good for children. When children
see advertisements for these items, they will want to try them. In fact,
several European countries have banned advertisements that target children, and many countries have placed restrictions on
cigarette and alcohol advertising.
Advertisements have become a big
part of our lives, especially because of television and the Internet. Because
they are so common in our lives, they can easily influence the way people think
and how they spend their money. Therefore, we should be careful of what we
advertise and make sure that all advertisements are strictly regulated.