Fast food companies advertise children’s meals featuring new toys on TV, and it has been suggested that seeing these toys may prompt children to request eating at fast food restaurants.
Advertisement
Using a database they compiled of all fast food TV ads that aired nationally in 2009, Jennifer A. Emond, PhD, and colleagues from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth found that only two nationally-recognized fast food chains engaged in child-directed TV advertising at that time. The parents were asked how often their kids watched four children’s TV channels, if their kids asked to go to the two national fast-food chains that advertised on those channels, if their kids collected toys from those restaurant chains, and how often the families visited those fast-food restaurants.
If you’re a parent you could surely relate to the fact that on every family trip to a fast-food restaurant you end buying your crying kid a happy meal.
Nearly 80 percent of the two restaurant chains’ child-directed ads aired on those four children’s networks, according to the researchers. The parents were asked to complete a survey including questions on the frequency at which their children watched the 4 networks for children.
Greater child commercial TV viewing was significantly associated with more frequent family visits to those fast food restaurants; toy collecting partially mediated that positive association.
The findings might not come as a shock to everyone. Moreover, 90% of those commercials are advertised through TV. They were also asked how often their kids got toys with their meals. The children in these families also watched more TV throughout the day.
The study primarly focuses on the relation between fast-food ads and children. The study focused on two separate fast-food chains.
The researchers enrolled 100 children (three to seven years of age) and one of their parents in the study.
The recent study revealed that kids’ meal ads are highly effective. Further, they were asked about the frequency at which the family visited these restaurants. The rapidly moving images, the bright and shiny colors that attract their eyes and dominate their attention, the very good looking food, which, normally, has nothing to do with what you really get when you go to the restaurant, the songs and jingles that get stuck in their heads, the promise of a toy if you go and eat there, all of them attract your child in an unspeakable manner and make him effectively crave fast food.
But marketers and child psychology experts had long known that child-directed ads that are aired on children’s networks are extremely persuasive.
Advertisement
The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about children’s nutrition. As a result they are more likely to be influenced by commercials.
