Does advertisement impacts youth?

Advertising does impact youth as it has always persuaded them for buying or at least being aware of their services and products for increasing sales and having a productive and positive impact on the economy. This paper shall elaborate on presenting an argumentative essay on whether advertisement impacts the youth segment of the society, with special reference of China.

Running head: DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACT YOUTH?
Argumentative Essay
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1DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACTS YOUTH?
Topic: Does advertisement impacts youth?
Advertising does impact youth as it has always persuaded them for buying or at least being
aware of their services and products for increasing sales and having a productive and positive
impact on the economy. For luring their audiences, the advertisers incline to design their
advertisements that are attractive and persuasive for the target audience for making the
purchase. “Media successfully creates a beauty ideal that the audience feel the need for
achieving, particularly when one accounts for the peer pressure for looking good within the
“future generation”.” This paper shall elaborate on presenting an argumentative essay on
whether advertisement impacts the youth segment of the society, with special reference of
China.
According to the recent survey reports, an average teenager spends more than 39 hours per
week in China, consuming advertisements and media including newspapers, games,
television, movies and internet (Banyai et al., 2017). It is equal to nearly 6 hours per day
consuming advertisements and media like online music or video. The advertisers spend
billions of dollars every year for advertising. Also, the study of McKenzie et al. (2018) have
revealed that teenagers are subconsciously exposed to above 3000 advertising messages
every day. The marketing companies world-wide hire some cool hunters as their market
researchers whose job is finding the underground trends that the company can further
capitalise on by means of exposing it to the world. These market researchers have a good
understanding of the youth mind and they use that knowledge and information for instilling
the norms, values, the fashion styles and trends to sell the products. Again, when the trend
becomes old, these hunters find new one and this cycle continues. According to Wang et al.
(2016), “by the time a child is 18, he or she will have seen about 20,000 food commercial
advertising food low in nutrition”. The children who belong to the age range of 13 to 19
years, spend about 144 billion dollars every year on clothing and entertainment. In the

2DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACTS YOUTH?
modern fast developing societies, youths need to make their own decisions and they are
mostly influenced by the advertisements.
It is to note that the main aim of advertisement is to develop a sense of insecurity within
human beings and this fear can be overcome only through buying the very product that they
desire for. They show the latest fashions and trends that lure the youths. For fitting in their
modern society and looking prefer, youths are forced indirectly to buy the advertised
products. This entire process develops a sense of jealousy among the people who want to
look like the perfect individuals, just like the ones they see in the advertisements. In today’s
world, most of the adolescents and youths think that for being accepted as a member of their
modern society they need to follow the modern trends. For example, many of the youngsters
today consider smoking as a current trend and style.
Media has always been used for manipulating the youths. The televisions, newspapers,
magazines and films have always influenced the youth segment of the society. They often are
claimed to make fake news using different techniques of deception and in this way they trick
the youth into seeing exactly what they wanted them to see. The tobacco advertisement also
always have considered the youths. Features and characteristics that are used in the cigarette
and tobacco advertisements are highly youth-oriented. Also, Van der Eijk, Lee and Ling
(2019) have claimed that the tobacco industry has now adopted advertisement techniques for
attracting and addicting the younger generation who will be loyal customers to their brand.
The tobacco, pharmaceutical and the alcohol companies have huge budgets for advertising
and they allot huge amounts of money for marketing towards the youngsters and the
teenagers. According to Feng (2018), “about 33 percent of all teen smoking in China is linked
to advertising. Teens also view roughly 2,000 alcohol advertisements per year, which makes
them more likely to try alcohol during their formative years.” With the same, additional 92 of

3DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACTS YOUTH?
the young people requests for specific prescription drugs from the doctors as they saw them
in the advertisements (XiaoyingGuo, Kwek Choon Ling & Min Liu, 2012) These
advertisements depicts alcohol, prescribed drugs and cigarettes in both glamorous and
positive manner and this further makes them more desirable for the youths. Moreover,
sexuality in the advertisements also influence their behaviours as an exposure to such
contents is likely to increase the likelihood of youngsters having desire for sex at young age.
Notwithstanding this fact, it is also to be noted that being aware of the visual message and the
reasons why the advertisement is presented is an educated understanding. It is to note that the
transformation of the polite and refined image of Scarlett O’hara is not more admired. It is
gone with the wind or with the ball busting image of Angelina Jolie. As the main source of
income for the media industry is advertisements, it needs to make use of its influence for
turning the ordinary people into mass consumers (Khajeheian, 2017). For instance, it shows
glamorous models and celebrities constantly with their flawless beauty that they often
achieve through painful facial operations. Even, today, due to the advancement in technology,
people also do high quality photo-shop to make them flawlessly beautiful on screen. This
beauty is then set as to be the benchmark, making youngsters feel dissatisfied with the way
they look or they appear and inevitably, on the back of all these, the company or the
advertisement becomes successful in selling the beauty products to the audiences and the
easiest mind of all for manipulation in this way is the mind of the youngsters or the teenagers.
They also prey on the natural insecurities of the teens by means of teaching them about the
likelihood that material possessions can make them really popular. Such advertising and
marketing encourages the young generation to buy costly products so that they can fit into
their peer circles.
Hence, from the above analysis it is clear that advertisements does affect the youths. The
marketing departments target the youths as of the fact that they have the spending power and

4DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACTS YOUTH?
are likely to become the adult customers in the near future. On one side, they make the
audiences aware of the products and services, which can be considered as positive. But, on
the other side, the negative impact that they have on youths are immense. They negatively
affect their behaviours, actions, preferences and nature as a whole.

5DOES ADVERTISEMENT IMPACTS YOUTH?
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van der Eijk, Y., Lee, J. K., & Ling, P. M. (2019). How Menthol Is Key to the Tobacco
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