Advertisements Do More Harm Than Benefit

Advertisements Do More Harm Than Benefit

As technology improves, so do profit-seeking organizations. To keep up with the consumer and economic demands in our modern world, companies nowadays are using new means to advertise and sell products to the public (Manohar). The new methods are clever and interruptive, and they are strategically placed almost everywhere. The new ways of advertising can also be bad for the public, and they certainly do more harm than benefit. Not only do they waste the consumer's time in things they may not really want to see or purchase, but they can also have psychological impacts such as lower self-esteem. According to a Time magazine article, Tuttle states: "Not only do these ads make us feel that if we purchase the advertised product that we will, in some way, be more like the people in front of the camera, but they may also simultaneously make us feel bad about ourselves in comparison, which in turn drives desires for status goods." Furthermore, many of the negative effects of advertising are not obvious to the victim, especially the audience of the youngest and eldest of age group.

One of the main reasons why advertising does more harm than benefit is the fact that people of any age group can be influenced and affected by advertisements everywhere. Some people might argue and say that one of the new methods of advertising includes "consumer targeting", where the marketing specialists provide advertisements for specific groups of people that they expect might be interested in the product. Or, in other words, as it is described in the Entrepreneur website, "Your target customers are those who are most likely to buy from you." ("Target Market"). For example, they might include beer commercials in between football games on TV and sometimes in the stadium, or they could show an advertisement about the way women should look in the summer on clothing designer websites and in beauty magazines, things which are specifically "targeted", not necessarily exclusive to, adults. Therefore, the fact is that anyone can watch TV, go to football games, browse the internet, or read beauty magazines. This means many children, boys and girls, can be influenced negatively by advertisements made for adults' mentality. A teenager (or even an adult) might feel less important and feel less confident about themselves after seeing what the other people look like and how they dress in commercials. According to the University of Chicago Press Journals, "Ads for beauty-enhancing products seem to make consumers feel that their current attractiveness levels are different from what they would ideally be." In addition, parents do not monitor what their young children and teenagers watch and do all the time, it is virtually impossible. These days, there are advertisements everywhere you go. On mobile phones, on billboards, in restaurants, and especially on social media sites, which are very popular amongst teenagers and adolescents. Like in newspapers and music, of course advertisements are regulated and controlled in some form to not allow explicit material, but almost anyone can watch them (e.g. super bowl commercials) with our modern technology gadgets without spending any money and without any parental consent. Ultimately, the main goal of commercials is to persuade people to buy a product, so extra effort is usually put in to show them everywhere.

...