What do Advertisements Tell Young People They Should Value - Essay Example

Introduction Thesis: Through analyzing the behaviour advertisers, the explosion of new media, the psychological makeup of young adults, and the correlation between youth behaviour and advertising, it is possible to construct a causal relationship between advertiser’s construction of the ideals of beauty and negative behaviour among young adults, such as the development of eating disorders. 2. Advertising Works 1. Size of industry i. Multi-billion, superbowl ads 2. Advertiser’s behaviour 3. Youths are especially susceptible to advertising 1. More emotionally vulnerable i. Cooper quote 2. More prone to turning emotion into action i. Saarni Quote 4. Advertising does, in fact, effect youth eating behaviour 1. Advertising focuses heavily on conceptions of beauty i. 24% of ads implicitly or explicitly encourage weight loss (Toro) 2. Youths who are exposed to increased beauty-based advertising have increased rates of eating disorder i. Peterson data Your Name Prof’s Name Course Code Date The Growing Influences of Advertising on the Mental Health and Behaviour of American Youths Advertising has been part of American life for centuries, and has certainly always had some kind of effect on the behaviour of Americans in a wide variety of ways. Throughout the past ten to twenty years, however, the amount of advertising exposure and kind of advertising has changed significantly, and may have an increased effect on American youths. It is incredibly difficult to construct a causal relationship between advertising and behaviour, something that advertisers have used to their advantage to fight regulation throughout history, from the cigarette era to today. The problems of determining causal relationships are myriad, but most simply rest on the well known idea that correlation is not causation: wearing your favorite team’s jersey and them winning does not indicate any causal relationship between your jersey choice and your team’s success. Furthering the complexity of this problem is the fact that advertising in fact mirrors many of the issues inherent to many forms of media, such as film and television, in, for instance, constructing unrealistic ideas of beauty. Advertisers, for instance, are often blamed on helping to cause eating disorders, while there may be many different societal and media factors at work in those issues. To construct a causal relationship, one must therefore go much further than simply analyzing correlation (though correlation certainly plays some part in the analysis). Through analyzing the behaviour advertisers, the explosion of new media, the psychological makeup of young adults, and the correlation between youth behaviour and advertising, it is possible to construct a causal relationship between advertiser’s construction of the ideals of beauty and negative behaviour among young adults, such as the development of eating disorders. The first thing that must be unequivocally establishes is the fact that advertising does, in fact, affect behaviour. This is its whole point of the entire industry, to lead people to buy products. There are various interpretations of the role of advertising. The most generous would say that advertising merely influences behaviour through demonstrations of a product’s usefulness to its client; advertising affects behaviour merely through informing (). The least generous would say that advertising twists people’s emotions, world view, and so on, in order to manipulate them into buying a given product (). The truth is probably somewhere in between, that advertising does rely on a product’s abilities, but that advertising also manipulates viewers to a significant extent. That advertising affects people’s behaviour can be seen merely by the size of the industry: it is a multi-hundred billion dollar industry worldwide (Shaman, 2012), and a single thirty second spot in the Super Bowl can sell for “upwards of $5 million” (Shaman, 2012). There is no way corporations would spend this kind of money on advertising if they were not confident in its ability to affect behaviour. Clearly, everyone, even advertisers themselves, recognize the ability of advertising to affect behaviour. Even though advertising certainly affects behaviour, this does not necessarily mean there is a causal relationship between it and changes in eating behaviour among American youths. Psychological studies, however, indicate that adolescents are especially susceptible to advertising, and are more likely to be more drastically impacted by it than other populations. Firstly, they have significantly less emotional regulation than more mature individuals. Adolescents, regardless of their home situation or anything else “have significantly reduced ability to regulate emotions” which has a basis “both in emotional maturity and brain development,” which essentially means that they are, both because of brain structure and mature development (Cooper 1998, p. 1383). Furthermore, beyond simply not being able to regulate their own emotions, adolescents show “a close link between emotion and action” (Saarni, 1998, p. 288). So, adolescents are more likely to be emotional influenced by the things in their environment, including the emotional manipulation of advertising, and are more prone to translating those emotional responses directly into action. Beyond this simple proclivity to being emotionally manipulated rather easily, there is direct evidence on a number of fronts that adolescent behaviour can be negatively affected by advertising. Peterson (2007) showed a correlation between instances of bulimia, anorexia nervosa and other conditions with advertising that focused on ideals of beauty that were difficult to achieve. Furthermore, Torro (1988) found that, in one study “over 22%” of advertising focused on weight loss either implicitly or explicitly. So between these two factors it is clear that there has been a significant reaction by adolescents to the ideals portrayed to them in magazines and other media, and that they are behaving differently, and even harmfully, in order to live up to these expectations. Understanding a causal relationship is never fully possible; there is a small chance that every single thing could simply be a massive coincidence. But in the case of advertising, there is relatively clear evidence that advertising affects the behaviours of adolescents. Firstly, advertisers themselves and their clients certainly seem to believe in advertising’s power, as so much money is spent on it. Secondly, youth, for a number of reasons, would be especially susceptible to the emotional influence of advertising. Finally, there is strong evidence of correlation between advertising ideals of beauty and instances of anorexia and other eating disorders in studies. With all this taken into account, we can feel fairly safe in saying that advertising has influence the eating behaviour of adolescents in a negative way. Works Cited Cooper, A (1998). “Attachment styles, emotion regulation, and adjustment in adolescence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 74. Peterson, R (2007). “Bulemia and anorexia in an advertising context” Journal of Business Ethics Vol 6 Iss 6. Toro, J (1988). “Body Shape, Publicity and Anorexia Nervosa” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Saarni, A (1998). “Emotional development: Action, communication, and understanding.” Handbook of child psychology, 5th ed. Serman, A (2012). “Superbowl Advertising” Bloomberg LP. Read More