Overweight children more prone to advertising

Children with overweight prone to advertising

02/23/2014

So far, it has been assumed that, above all, the age of children is the decisive factor for the ability to recognize and classify advertising as such. Austrian researchers have now discovered that other factors, such as body weight, also play a decisive role - especially when it comes to promoting food.

Differences in the media literacy of children
The age of children was previously regarded as a crucial factor in whether the little ones are capable of recognizing and classifying advertising as such. But Austrian researchers have now found that body weight, body awareness and eating habits also play a crucial role. As the study author Dr. Ralf Terlutter of the University of Klagenfurt announced, can be explained so that within the age groups again and again to large differences in the „advertising literacy“, So the media literacy of children, come.

Self-confident children handle advertising more competently
The university professor and his colleague Julia Spielvogel conducted 249 interviews with children aged seven to eleven at three Austrian elementary schools. The results were partly surprising. For example, children who like to eat unhealthy food are less skeptical about foods advertised in advertising. Terlutter said that they could avoid such cognitive dissonance. One of the key findings of the study is that children with better self-confidence are generally more competent with advertising. The self-confidence is influenced not least by the body mass index (BMI) and the own body perception.

Important role of parents
The researchers therefore recommend that obese children need special training in the field of media literacy early on. This is especially true since about 40 percent of all commercials on TV have food content. The parent or guardian has an important role to play, because, as the study shows, parental attitudes to the advertised foodstuffs have a strong impact on the children's point of view.

20,000 to 40,000 commercials per year
The German Society for Paediatrics and Youth Medicine (DGKJ) also came to similarly negative conclusions in 2011 regarding the influence of TV advertising on children. The little ones see an average of between 20,000 and 40,000 commercials a year while they watch TV. As the evaluation of the DGKJ revealed at that time, about half of all advertising films referred to sugary sodas, sweets and savory biscuits. Meanwhile, the number of children with obesity or obesity continues to increase. In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that around 170 million overweight children worldwide. (Ad)