Ads Targeting Children Should Not Be Allowed During Prime Time | Band 9 IELTS Essay Sample

One of the prime times for advertising on TV is when children get back from school. Some people think that advertisements aimed at children should not be allowed. What is your opinion?

Here is a band 9 IELTS essay on this topic. Need help with writing? Get your writing samples corrected by me. 

Band 9 IELTS Essay Sample

Advertisements play a major role in influencing the buying decisions of customers. Over the years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of ads targeting children because advertisers are aware that kids are the centre of nuclear families. Most of these ads are aired in the evenings when children are back from school and sitting in front of the television. Some people opine that commercials targeting young kids should be banned. I agree with this view to a great extent because in my opinion excessively promotional ads have a devastating effect on children.

First of all, children are easily manipulated by the adverts which take them to the virtual world and coax them to purchase products that are not always worth their money. For instance, toys of the Star Wars series are very popular among teenagers and sales of these toys are very high in the market. Secondly, the advertisements are delivered in such a way that children start pestering their parents to buy those products. The fast food chain McDonald’s employs this strategy. Their ads attract more and more teenagers to eat fast food which is not good for health because it contains high levels of fats and cholesterol which cause obesity and diabetes in children.

Another reason to restrict ads is that they may even put the lives of children at risk. Children often imitate the dangerous stunts performed by celebrities in commercials and often lose their life or cause themselves serious injuries because they are not aware of the consequences.

On the other hand, not all ads are bad. Actually, some of them promote good habits in children. For example, some ads encourage children to brush their teeth twice a day and wash their hands frequently. Such ads develop healthy habits in children and hence they should be aired during prime time.

To summarize, most ads targeting children are overly promotional and have a negative impact on children. Hence the government must ensure that they are not aired during prime time. However, ads promoting good habits and social commitment must be shown in the evenings when most children are in front of the television.

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