Advertisements often target people of a youth age group because they wish to encourage a younger age base to be their customers in the future. For example, companies like Anheuser-Busch use mascots  to advertise, such as their Clydesdale horses. or Spuds Mackenzie, a dog depicted to be “cool” to promote the sale of bud light. In fact, one of the largest events in the world, the Super Bowl,  is watched by over 100 million Americans and many commercials are advertising alcohol, mostly because it is normally referenced that sports go hand in hand with alcohol.

There are a high number of viewers that buy the products advertised. It is said that 26% of the viewers buy the products they have viewed. And in many cases, companies who advertise alcohol target teens and young adults, due to their continuing development in moral choices. Studies show that 66% of Americans watch TV daily and the average person watches about 6 hours and 47 minutes of TV a day. Now you must be thinking, ”that’s not me, I don’t watch nearly that much TV” but you’re not accounting for toddlers, unemployed, and elderly staying at home, watching Tv. So assuming that you, the average viewer watches about 3 hours of TV a day, and assuming your life expectancy will be 78.2 years, then we can say that, in your lifetime, you will spend about 9.8 years of your life watching Tv. Surprisingly, you will spend 2.6 of those years watching various advertisements. So while we could have spent those 1,366,560 minutes finishing that English project or developing the cure for cancer, we usually will choose the most convenient for our entertainment, like watching tv, and inadvertently, exposed to advertisements.

However, TV is not the only outlet for advertisements. Countless numbers of magazines and websites also display advertisements of risky behavior. Although some of these magazines are targeted at adults, they still display images and products that can be harmful for children. Specific examples of these are Sports Illustrated, Popular Science, People, etc.

.Many of these magazines and tv advertisements may also market standards of living to the viewer. Our society has developed a way that we think people should appear as thanks to media, celebrity, and model standards. This causes many commercials to promote what is the “right way to look”. We are often bombarded with ads such as makeup to show girls how to be more beautiful by buying their product, or muscle enhancement ads to promote the perfect male body. Thousands of these are circulated through popular magazines such as Sports Illustrated, common to teenage consumers. Seeing these ads may lower our self esteem and cause mental and physical problem because we are encouraged to buy products that may affect our growth or mentality as teenagers.

Internet advertising can be just as bad as commercials on television. An average teenager spends a minimum of 31 hours online per week. I’m sure that most people have a Facebook account, in fact, over 50% of Americans has a Facebook account, that’s about 152 million people. Social networking is the most popular online activity, with users spending more than one fifth of their time on on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Statistics show that theres 7-10 advertisements per page on Facebook. According to comScore Ad Metrix, there has been 1.11 trillion ads displayed on the internet in the year of 2011 and Facebook accounted for 346 billion impressions, that makes up 31.2% of the market share. Also, according to Nielsen, internet ads grew by 12.1% as of July, 2012 while magazine ads dropped by 1.4%. This should give you an idea of how powerful online advertising is. Even though online ads increased the most, television ads also went up by 2.8% which still remains dominant overall.

Hopefully, by now, you understand why it is crucial that we see the oppression or even removal of some of these ads. Signing this petition would show that the community does care about the content kids and teens are exposed to. Thank you for your time.

Advanced English III Project by: Cody Hsieh, Brandon Ly, and Xin Wang