Impact of Ads on Children

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Are your children driving you crazy with their constant requests for the hottest toys or snacks? You may want to think twice about giving them free reign in front of the television. A study published in this month's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine reveals the more time a child spends watching TV, the more often they ask their parents to buy the products they see on the commercials.

Researchers from Packard Children's Hospital and Stanford School of Medicine in Palo Alto, Calif., surveyed more than 800 ethnically and socio-demographically diverse third-grade children about their time spent in front of the television. This time included watching television, watching movies or videos and playing video games. The children were also asked whether they requested their parents to buy them food, drinks or toys they had seen on TV.

The average child reported spending more than 22 hours in front of the screen each week. Of that time, about 10 hours was spent watching TV and the rest playing video games. The children admitted to having requested about one toy a week and two requests every three weeks for food or drinks. Children who watched the most television asked their parents to buy them more over the course of the two-year study than children who watched less television.

Studies show advertising begins influencing the requests a child makes to their parents at a very young age. The big concern researchers express over these findings is kid-targeted advertising tends to promote high-calorie, nutritionally poor choices. Researchers say marketers are becoming part of the obesity problem and need to help parents with a solution, not make it harder.

A recent national survey found the average child in the United States spends six and a half hours a day using various forms of media. This is more than any other activity done while awake. The majority of this time is spent watching television. The average American child will see more than 40,000 television commercials every year, in addition to seeing product placement in all different media outlets.

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SOURCE: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine,2006;160:363-368