4. Opposing forces

Advertising and marketing to children, adolescents and young people is a social policy issue informed as much by heat and light.  Academic researchers, supposedly disinterested, and political researchers,, just as much as pressure group activists, find it hard to dissociate empirical findings from a preferred solution to the problem of how to persuade young people to behave in particular ways.

          Over time this has led to the development of two opposing camps: groups with very different ideologies.  The following table is a simple compare-and-contrast view of the issues that divide what shall be called here the educators and the legislators.

The two groups take a very different approach not only to advertising but social issues in general.  They are ideo-logically different and inevitably somewhat selective in the evidence they admit to support their position.  Consider how each group would answer the following questions: 

"Advertising to children and adolescents is divisive, invasive and pervasive" Discuss. 

"Advertisers are cynical seducers of innocent and gullible children" Discuss. 

"Advertising subverts our reason by a relentless onslaught on us" Discuss. 

Or try the arguments of the educators: 

 "Parents are, and indeed should be, the most important influence on what advertisements their children watch and their reaction to them" Discuss. 

"Advertising pays for programming: the quality and quantity of the latter is very much dependent on the former" Discuss.

 "The power of advertising to the young is grossly over-emphasized: it simply cannot persuade people to buy a product they don't want" Discuss. 

The problem for both groups is they have a strong inclination to over-simplify a complex problem.  And the most important question considered here is which factors are the most powerful influences in determining purchasing preferences, requests and behaviours.