Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
Television advertising directed toward young children (aged two to five) should not be allowed.
Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Intriguing as it looks at first sight, TV advertisements that aim at toddlers and pre-schoolers generally cannot achieve the effect that most people expected them to have; sometimes they can even backfire and have detrimental influence on young children’s development. Therefore, I personally believe these TV commercials should be banned.

To begin with, there is no denying that it is next to impossible for children younger than five to be in possession of any financial resources, let alone making decisions on whether to buy a product or not. If the targeted audiences have no purchasing power, then the commercials aiming at these young audiences would simply be a waste of money and time, and should be stopped at the first given opportunity. It probably makes a lot more sense to redirect these advertisements to the parents of the young children, and try to influence their decision on which product to adopt for their kids.

Furthermore, television advertisements are usually the brainstorming products of adult advertising professionals, with many concepts and underlying meanings that beyond the reach of a toddler or pre-schooler to comprehend. Often the case, these concepts can have negative influence on the lives of the young kids. For instance, in order to be appealing to the young minds, many of these commercials adopt cartoon and humorous approaches. And it is not uncommon to see the main character running offer a cliff and stay airborne for a few seconds before falling straight down, or being chased by a frenetic dog. These actions may be funny, but they could potentially blur the boundary of a child’s safety net, and lead to disastrous outcome if the targeted audiences were to imitate what they saw in the commercials. As a result, I would prefer to nib these commercials in the bud before they become nightmares of the parents.

In conclusion, television advertising for young children between the age of two and five should be banned all together. They would be more appropriate to be first introduced to children as young as primary school pupils, as these students would possess more judgement and maybe a small amount of pocket money, and can choose whether a product shown on the screen is right for them.