Junk Food Ads and Kids

Fast food companies specialize in lifestyle marketing and often aim such ads at teens and younger children. Many of the ads are digital, and marketing campaigns online via social media are a favorite channel for reaching these consumers. It is ethically questionable to aim ads that use marketing techniques other than information at audiences that may not have the maturity to treat them skeptically.

– Bert Markgraf, Demand Media

As the number of childhood obesity has been largely increasing , the issue over whether aiming junk food or fast food advertisements at children is ethical or not has been raised. For the last decade, televised food promotions targeting children have been found increasingly dominated by the big five food items: sugar breakfast cereals, confectionery, sweat snacks, soft drinks and fast food restaurants. And experiment showed that it takes only one or two exposures to a ten to thirty second food commercial to influence the children’s short term food preferences. Thus, it is undeniable that these advertisements have affected the increase in children’s consumption over the unhealthy fast food.

when people are at a young age, they barely consider or even know the ingredients behind the fast foods, all they want is just juicy sense of taste and sweet flavor. Having known  this fact and psychology of kids, fast food business marketers aimed at  the innocent kids and teenagers as primary targets to maximize business profits, without little consideration of the consequences of large consumption of fast food by kids and teenagers. I can not imagine if all the kids are obsessed with fast food and the more they eat the fatter they are getting and unhealthier the society are becoming. As a result, marketers  should not do whatever it takes to earn profit, but realize the responsibilities as well as the social ethics under their shoulders.