英语论文网

C v. Pacifica Foundation, U.S., 1978)

Suggestions for modified regulations
1. A comprehensive ban on advertising during children's programming would be damaging, because the financial support of advertisers assists in the provision of programming to children. Instead of that, the legislation could leave a scope for advertisers to direct truthful and no misleading information at children, which is fair for advertisers to gain profits and good for children to receive positive information as well (Letter from Edward, 2007). For example, there might be some food nutrition information coming out when advertisers are promoting their products on TV, which is still can be a good guideline for children’s daily nutrition intake.
2. The government should pay much attention on and regulate the content rather than the amount of advertisements material aimed at children:
a) A study indicates that the obesity in the U.S. costs the American health care system seventy billion dollars per year, and 80% of overweight children become overweight adults. (Dan Glickman, Agric. Sec’y, 1998) Commercials aimed at children should include certain information about their products in their advertisements (eg: fat, sugar content and sodium level, etc.) so that children or their parents can choose healthy food for them.
b) Cartoon characters or popular stars should not appear in advertisements, especially during children’s programs, because such characters are so cute and interesting to children which might mislead children.
3. Companies could still produce whatever legal products they choose and promote to children, but, they should have to increase their disclosure of truthful information about the products and try to use language that children can understand (Ramsey; William A, 2006, p.392).

Conclusion

In summary, the content of much of the TV commercials has a mental and physical health hazard to young children. Therefore, it is necessary to have advertising regulations to prevent TV commercials damaging children’s health. However, it can still be found that the CTA does not work as effectively as expected to protect children from the harms caused by advertising, because those inconsistencies and exceptions in the CTA caused the legislation failure of the Court’s four-prong test. In order to help and improve the CTA to work more efficiently, the federal government should be more concerned with children’s health instead of just care about the political and financial aspects of the problem. Moreover, parents play a vital role in teaching and helping their children to build cognitive skills. In future, the society which exposes young children to many thousands of advertisements every year should also has a duty to educate those children in consumer literacy and critical viewing.

Bibliography

Ahava, A., & Palajoki, P. (2004) “International Journal of Consumer Studies”, Adolescent consumers: reaching them, border crossings and pedagogical challenges, Vol. 28, Issue 4, pp.371- 378.
Bigda & Carolyn (2005) “Money”, 5 ways to protect kids, Vol.34, Issue 3, p.91.
Brooks Barnes, (2007) Limiting Ads of Junk Food to Children [online], Para.1, New York, TIMES
Children and Television(2008) [on