What are the impacts that television advertisements have on our children's health?

       Advertisements typically have a negative connotation when it comes to food. However, advertisements do have positive effects.  There is a sufficient amount of research to state that advertising does affect the behavior of consumers. With this being said, advertising can be used to effectively advertise healthy foods as they can for nutritionally poor foods. A study focusing on different marketing techniques to discover which one caused children to want to eat healthy food more showed that with the fun and creative advertising most television commercials do for children targeted audience anyways, children will be just as likely to eat healthy foods such as broccoli, apples, carrots, and water as they would for an unhealthy advertised product. Children who were shown an advertisement with a photo were more likely to want to eat a healthy food item than when shown an advertisement of a cartoon or a drawing (Lagomarsino & Suggs 2018). Television commercials which are generally motion pictures would be successful at encouraging children to eat healthily. This being said, with the recent health movement and body-positive movement, children are exposed to both negative and positive food items on their television.  

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         According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Commercials that advertise alcohol and tobacco spend 10% of their budget for their commercials on displaying the warnings of their product(Paediatrics & Child Health 2003). Advertisements that explicitly display their warnings give children and more specifically teenagers, in this case, the correct information before they may think of trying the unhealthy product. In the end, advertisements can have positive effects just on how they have negative effects. This being said, kid-centered advertisements can be considered fun and harmless if the parents help guide the children’s choices and television companies display commercials with healthy messages along with the advertisements that may display a product with unhealthy habits.