Impact of commercial advertising on a child

The life of contemporary children is very strongly associated with the mass media, and the media have become an extremely important part in the socialization process. The reach and influence of the media is not only growing, but also completely different than it used to be in the past. In addition to the many functions that media perform, they are also an important medium for advertising. Children and youth can be both the recipient of the advertisement as well as its active participant. Advertising affects an important cognitive sphere of a child and child’s interpersonal and social relations. A child exposed to the impact of advertising, accepts its content uncritically. This leads to the child's formation of many defective and lasting beliefs, affecting the development of child’s personality, the system of beliefs and values. The developmental and educational effects related to the impact of the advertising cause many controversies. The following article aims to present, based on the subject literature, a broad spectrum of advertising impact on a child, with particular emphasis on television advertising. My assumption is to show the problem from the perspective of social sciences, including sociology. For this reason, I am not concentrating only on the psychological dimension of the phenomenon, and I am also trying to outline important aspects of social and cultural reality in which the process of socializing the consumption of children takes place.