Ad syndrome takes toll on children
By Jeff Pan (Chinadaily.com.cn)Updated: 2007-04-06 16:10
-- Advertisers are going into overdrive to reach their targets, and their overwhelming efforts paid off as it becomes almost impossible for anyone to escape from ads, but besides big companies, young kids are paying the price, too.
"Liang Liang, come here to use the washroom," asked the teacher, but the five-year-old boy astonished his teacher with an advertisement punch line "frequent urination, urgent urination, and delayed urination."
Liang Liang, who keeps himself in fashion of the latest advertisements by frequently speaking them out, is a kid suffering autism in Qiseguang Children Potentiality Exploration Center in Northeast China's Jilin Province. A lot of other kids in the center suffering from the same disease do not like to talk much, but once they open their mouths, it's usually an advertisement line.
 A kid was playing video games by himself under a major billboard in Shenyang on July 4, 2006, [China Youth Daily]  |
Four-year-old Yuan Yuan, who also studied in Qiseguang, could recognize more characters than other kids of his age. Whenever he grabs a piece of newspaper, he enjoys reading all the advertisements, especially those about pharmacy. He now has a good knowledge about the addresses and medicines available in local drug stores. When he talks to himself, it's usually about advertisements, too.
"Most kids suffering from autism share the same interest of watching advertisements. They love to grab the remote control and switch channels for all kinds of colorful ads," said Wang Lijun, Director of the center with a worried look, "advertisements are swarming us. How can our kids cope with it?"
Children beleaguered with ads
According to Wang, normal kids are more prone to be influenced by advertisements. In a normal kindergarten not far from Qiseguang Center, parents have also suffered a lot from their children's ad syndrome.
According to the teacher in the kindergarten, a plump mom was told by her three-year-old kid to buy a special type of shape-molding underwear advertised on TV.
Another mom who made a visit to a private hospital for women was asked by his four-year-old son whether she had sterile problems. The mom was surprised by his son's vocabulary he had learned through all kinds of advertisements the hospital made for treating sterility.
"Advertisements permeate through every corner of our life and society, already forming a sub-cultural biological sphere, which surrounds our kids, influencing their outlooks towards life, world, and values," said Wang.
Ms. Xu working in a kindergarten is worried about how the "overly commercialized themes of advertisements" could infiltrate young children. Besieged in tons of commercial advertisements, young kids who are lack of discerning abilities could just blindly develop a passion for famous brands, and race with each other on how luxuriously they live.
| Zhai Shufen, mother of an eight-year-old boy, is most unsatisfied with procreative and urinary advertisements. "My son asked me one day, 'what are impotence and premature ejaculation?' How am I supposed to answer the question to an eight-year-old boy?" said Zhai, "In his Chinese homework there is blank filling test, the student is supposed to affix an adjective to Ren Liu (which could both mean 'stream of people' and 'induced abortion'), my son used 'painless' instead of 'bustling' without any hesitation." |
"We could not change the commercial nature of advertisements, and we could accept the healthy and positive ones, but some ads exert very negative influences to young kids," noted Wang.
Wang considers one of Coca-Cola's advertisements featuring Olympic gold medalist Liu Xiang as improper, which tells a story that Liu and his friends fighting for a bottle of coke on the dinner table, tracks, and then to the street, and Liu finally escapes by jumping into a bus.
"Whenever I see it, another ad comes to my mind: one kid robs an ice cream from his friend and runs away, leaving behind one sentence for his friend to chew: 'Want to share? No way!'" Wang shook her head, "the only kids in their families today are already 'selfish' in a lot of ways. To teach them to be considerate, caring, willing to share with others is a responsibility for the society, but ads like this have an opposite effect."
Stricter management solicited
"Many parents do not have time to stay with their children, and make TV as the children's nurse. Advertisements are usually the prime selection for children to watch on TV," said Miss Wu, a teacher in a kindergarten.
Ads with wrongful orientation should be simply banned, and those targeted to adults should be only broadcast on selected media at selected times.
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