by C. Spencer

Created on: June 02, 2008

As one might suspect, blame in this case is not entirely on one side or the other. However, I do think that a lion's share of the blame falls on the side of the advertisers. Let me explain why.

When I say that advertisers are to blame (at least in substantial part) for consumerism in children, I should be understood as saying that advertisers play a crucial role in causing or bringing about consumerism in children, and that this is immoral. I will defend both of these claims.

First, it seems quite clear that advertisers play an obvious and important role in causing or bringing about consumerist tendencies in small children. As we are all well aware, advertisers are very effective at what they do; children are exposed to literally hundreds of advertisements on a daily basis, and it is very difficult to avoid some forms of advertisements (e.g., those on billboards). Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that if advertisers stopped targeting children with commercial advertisements, children would be less prone to develop consumerist tendencies.

To be clear, this is simply a claim about the causal relationship between advertisers, advertisements, and children. Advertisers create and distribute advertisements; upon seeing these advertisements in sufficient number and with a sufficient degree of regularity, children desire to have the products advertised. Like adults, children learn to associate happiness with the possession of those products featured in commercial advertisements. Insofar as consumerism simply is the ideological view that happiness consists in the possession and use of material goods, it seems that the advertisers play an obvious causal role in bringing about consumerist tendencies and beliefs in children.

My second claim was that it is immoral for advertisers to cause or bring about consumerist tendencies in children. This is a complicated issue, but my basic line of reasoning is as follows. Advertisers seek to create artificial desires ("wants") in children, which will cause them to convince their parents to purchase the products for them. To this extent, then, advertisers use or exploit children for financial gain. It is my view that it is immoral to use or exploit children for financial gain; thus, it is immoral to create artificial desires in children via advertisements.

Let me point out another sense in which it may be considered immoral to advertise to children. Since sustained exposure to effective advertisements does in fact cause people to conceive

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