Advertising and Media Education

Advertising and Media Education (13-18)

Advertising accompanies young people in their everyday lives and should therefore be addressed by parents in an effective way. Parents may be uncertain about the topic of advertising and have questions about it. If parents are given insights into the media education work on the topic and into the older child's perception of advertising as well as tips on information offers, this can be very helpful for the parents and is bound to strengthen their educational partnership.

An important piece of information for parents is above all that the topic of advertising in the family is primarily relevant when visiting a shop or buying groceries in the supermarket, since children can express clear preferences for certain products. Parents can also encounter their children's consumption wishes that they do not want to fulfil or that they do not understand. That the children have enthusiasm for this or that product due to advertising, however, is clear to many parents.

In addition to advertising goods and services, there are advertisements of social causes, events, etc. Advertising is not a bad thing, but it is very important to recognise a message as advertising and the techniques to influence. Online advertising merges with everything else – media publications, personal publications, scientific texts, etc. It can be targeted to different users according to their preferences and thus have a greater impact on them.

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Skills and competences that are important to support this age group:

Parents should recognise the influence of advertising in young adults buying wishes.
The attention of parents and children in this age group should not only be focused on advertising messages, as young people are highly influenced by the ideas and lifestyle portrayed in advertising.
Parents should support young adults to discover and to uncover the most common advertising strategies. They should talk to them about advertisement they see and encourage them to think about what advertisements are trying to do.

Read the article Marketing and Consumerism - Special Issues for Tweens and Teens that is linked in our ressources section to learn more about the impact advertising has on young adults and how advertising is especially designed to reach this target group.

Which skills should children between 13 and 18 have developed and in which area do they still need support?

Children in this age group can identify advertisements and distinguish them from content in various media.
They can usually understand the purpose of advertising and use the advertised information to make a purchasing decision.
Young adults might not yet fully understand how advertising makes products more expensive, this should be discussed.
Not all children at this age might recognise tricky product placement strategies.
Young adults might not know that clicking an advertisement on social media sends data to the makers of the advertisement. How social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat collect user data, which they use to target advertising to users should be critically discussed and explained.
They might not have the skills to make judgments about political advertisements, particularly during election campaigns.

Have a look at the article Advertising: how it influences children and teenagers that you can find in our link section to see the different developmental stages of children and get more tips on how to deal with advertising at this age.

Exercise

In the previous modules we have shown what influence advertising has on younger children, how advertising is perceived at this age, which advertising strategies are difficult to recognise and how parents can accompany and support their children in recognising advertising.

Finally, summarise methods you can give parents to question the influence and intention of advertising. Enclosed are some suggestions, add your own ideas to the list and develop examples for implementation:

Accompanying consumption
Explanation of advertising strategies/ intention/ message
Questioning the advertising message (target group, reliability of the message, intention)
Recognise advertising and perceive the placement and frequency in different media
Production of advertising
Check privacy settings to limit collection of data
Discuss and encourage a positve body image and real life peer groups

If you are not sure how to implement these methods, take a look at our MediaParent tips at the end of each module. We often give you strategies to use during your parents' evening, if they are adapted to children they'll also work as suggestions for parents to implement media education at home.

What you learn in this course

Use the knowledge from modules 1 and 2 to deduce in which areas young people in this age group need guidance and support.
You'll be able to determine what competences this age group needs in relation to (online) advertising.
You can reproduce methods that can be used to train adolescents to deal with advertising in a reflective and critical way.
You can formulate instructions and suggestions for media education at home.

Get ready: Tips for MediaParent consultants

Collect knowledge and sort it

Here’s a list of common advertising strategies. You could make a game out of collecting strategies with parents during your parents' evening as a group activity. Let them tell you how products are being sold in childrens advertisements and help them naming these strategies correctly. This knowledge will be useful when talking to children about strategies and intention of advertisement at home. Later, Parents could make a game out of this, asking their children to spot strategies together.

The bribe: you get a free toy when you buy a product and you’re encouraged to collect them all – for example, toys packaged with takeaway meals and small toys in cereal packets.
The game: you can play a game and win a prize if you buy a product.
The big claim or promise: a product tastes excellent, or it’s the best in the world. Or a product will bring you fun and excitement and make your life better – for example, you’ll have more friends or be able to run faster.
The appeal to emotions: the advertisement tugs at your heart strings or makes you afraid for your safety.
The super-person: popular or famous people promote a product to make you think you can be just like them if you have the product too.
The cartoon character: a cartoon character you know and like tells you about a product to make it more attractive.
The special effects: filming tricks like close-ups, soft lighting and artificial sets make a product look larger or better than it really is.
The repeat: showing the same thing over and over makes you remember and recognise a product.
The music: catchy tunes or popular songs make you like an advertisement – and the product it advertises – more.
The joke: laughing makes you like an advertisement – and the product it advertises – more.
The story: the advertisement tells an interesting story so you want to keep watching.

(Source: https://raisingchildren.net.au/toddlers/play-learning/screen-time-media/advertising-children)

Encourage parents to create active experiences

When it comes to questioning the message of advertising, parents should be motivated to become active. In this age group, it is important to talk about the intentions, messages and lifestyle image of advertising. Help your children to become experts and let them discover advertising strategies in different media. Motivate parents to actively check the reliability of advertising messages together with the children. A celebrity is only eating a certain brand of muesli? Organise a test and try different types of muesli. Do the promised advertising messages match the reality? Put the statements of influencers and celebrities to the test and check the statements of product presentations.

More tips for parents on how to implement media education at home:

Watch a selected food commercial with tweens and teens, e.g. for their favourite food, and discuss impressions and messages. The teens can then become food testers and analyse the product in terms of taste and appearance. Compare previously expressed ideas about the product with the actual "test results". This way, young people can recognise differences and similarities between the advertising promise and the real product.
The effects of advertising on teenagers can be limited by talking about the way advertisements work to sell ideas as well as products. For example, some advertisements link products with the ‘perfect’ life the people in the ads seem to have. Initiate a discussion with the children about the dreams that ads are selling and real life. For example, when watching a clothing commercial or ad, ask older children if they actually know anyone who looks or acts like the model. Ask if the lifestyle that ads are trying to sell looks realistic. Are they trying to make tweens and teens think that buying their product will give them a taste of the glamour they portray?
When you talk with children about advertising, the goal is to help them work out the difference between products and the strategies that are used to sell them. You can also help them learn the difference between advertising messages and other media messages that are designed to entertain, inform or educate.