INFLUENCE OF TELEVISION (TV) ADVERTS ON CHILDREN

1.1 Introduction

Children are the most precious asset for the parents. Now, nowhere is a component that more friendly with them and sharply reflect messages than TV. Television remains the most effective medium for reaching today’s customers and it also is most efficient for introducing people to brands. Advertising through television allows marketer to show and tell a wide audience your business, product or service. It allows one to actually demonstrate the benefits of ownership. The importance of advertising grows steadily as brands rely heavily on media for various marketing objectives such as increasing sales, creating knowledge and awareness in the market etc. The field of advertising continues to grow and evolve. Advertising also plays a very important role in shaping the ever-changing norms of society both nationally and globally.

As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.

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1.2 Background of Study

Television advertisement represents one of the several stimuli to which children are exposed, like other kinds of stimuli existing within their environment. Television advertisement has a powerful tendency to influence children’s behaviour and general way of life, thus study examines the kind of influences or effects advertising on television can have on children.

Seventy-six years ago, in 1928 to be precise, a new dimension in communication and publicity was introduced into the Nigerian commercial and social life by the United African Company [UAC]. This new dimension was advertising. Through its West African publicity, the company was able to execute and implement its advertising objectives in the whole of West Africa with Nigeria as its headquarters.

Television appeals to the literate as well as the illiterate and this is one feature of TV that makes it unique and different from other mediums. The hour today is the hour of mass communication. Advertising in particular has become an indispensible mode of communication with the market. Advertising is a means of communication with the user of product or service. With the growing role of advertising in the lives of peoples’ attention now is being paid to the various negative as well as positive effects of advertising.

One reason why advertising aimed at children did not emerged as an issue until relatively recently is that for many years, broadcasters did not consider their audience of children viewers as a particularly valuable market for advertisers. For instance, the first major study on American children and television makes only passing mention of advertising. Advertising to children help in generating jobs, putting money into the economy and instilling the importance of freedom to choose at a young age. It helps in developing a child’s ability to comprehend the value of money and teaches them that a person can achieve anything if they have the will to pray the price. The millions of dollars are spent every year by the advertising industries on the ads that target children. Young audiences are bombarded with persuading messages through media such as internet, television, magazines, bill boards, radio etc.

In contribution, Baran (2009) opines that television technology is but a double age sword that has the power of doing good and evil to anybody exposed to it. Keyes (2000:1) raised fears about the negative influence that the media have on child culture. “Children are particularly vulnerable to outside influence from their television sets because their values and ideals have not yet fully developed”. Thus they are prone to alteration by any slightest means. Chari (2005) says “their world is erected by the stories they hear, see and tell. Television plays significant role in this process, hence the importance of who should determine what should shape people’s perception and how”.

Television in terms of fashion has influenced the children, thereby making them believe in a particular way of dressing. The kind of clothes used in acting, stage music, advertisement are presented to the society as the best dressing to make one look good. Mangwere et-al (2013) supports this, stating that “television are some of the factors that today affects the way teenagers (children) dress, talk, walk and even influence the type of music or food they want. Besides being influenced by the characters on television, children are also prone to be influence by the presenters of the programme (Boone, & Lomore, 2001).

Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Influence of Television (TV) Adverts on Children.

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1.3 Statement of Problems

Investigation revealed that lack of parental control on television viewing habit of the primary school children and poor creation of awareness of time for those programmes made for children viewing by the media houses. Also, constant viewing of adverts in television that are specially made for adult influence children moral life. The importance of television generally in promoting the culture of the society and influencing behavior of children either positively or negatively the researcher felt an obvious need for embarking on the study. A lot of studies have been carried out in Nigeria pertaining to primary school children; the recent study on children was enhancing the learning ability of primary school children with television. Although there are several television programmes that are good to impact good behavioural habits as well as moral value to the primary school children, but they failed to take notice of such programmes, it also envisaged problems.

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1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to investigate the Influence of Television (TV) Adverts on Children. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To determine the extent to which the child’s practices behaviours acquired from viewing TV adverts;
2. To determine the role of TV adverts in the child’s socialization;
3. To know if children like other adverts apart from TV adverts;
4. To find out the various reasons why children watch TV adverts; and
5. To find out the particular advert that interests the children most in television.

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1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Are children portraying positively in TV adverts?
• Do children behave positively towards TV adverts?
• Do female perform more in TV adverts than male?
• Do TV advert inspire children after watching?
• Are children portrayed as special television advert viewers?

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1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

Hypothesis One

• H0: Children are not portrayed positively in TV adverts.
• H1: Children are generally portrayed positively in TV adverts.

Hypothesis Two

• H0: Children do not behave positively towards TV adverts.
• H1: Children behave positively towards TV adverts.

Hypothesis Three

• H0: Children are not portrayed as special TV advert viewers.
• H1: Children are portrayed as special TV adverts viewers.

Hypothesis Four

• H0: Female does not perform more in TV adverts than men.
• H1: Female performs more in TV advert than male.

Hypothesis Five

• H0: TV advert do not inspire children after watching.
• H1: TV adverts inspire children after watching.

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1.7 Significance of Study

The significance of this study is a therefore to outline and examine these factors in a TV advert which negatively affect the child’s development so that the family, government and society at large can control and educate them. The second significance is to examine how effective the various existing machineries aimed at children have been.

Children constitute an essential fragment of every home, and society. Consequently, the society and the government in particular pay a lot a attention to all issues affecting the welfare of the children, the effects, which adverts have on children, constitute one of such issues. If not checked, such effects of TV advert are likely to make the child develop along negative lines.

This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.

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1.8 Scope of Study

The scope of the research is focused on the Influence of Television (TV) Adverts on Children using Aurora Television (TV) Programme as a case study.

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1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:

1. Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
3. Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
4. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).

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1.10 Definition of Terms

Television Adverts: TV adverts refers to a marketing tool or communication whose aim is to build preferences for advertised brands and services are transmitted through a visual and audio medium.

Effects: In this study, effects refer to the results or consequences of one thing or the other.

Children: Conceptionally children cab be defined as persons that have not attained the age of puberty.

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1.11 Assumptions of the Study

The following assumptions were made in order to give direction and strength to the study. These include:

1. That the children in question are normal and are not mentally retarded and can also reason properly.
2. That children are exposed to and do watch TV adverts.
3. That adverts relayed on TV and to which the children are exposed together directly or indirectly affect them.