How Using Children in Adverts Has Evolved

While there have been many studies by psychologists revealing how children respond to adverts over time - far less research has been carried out on how kids are represented in the adverts themselves. Despite this fact, it's important for parents who care about their child's exposure to advertising to consider how children are represented by the major advertisers.

As well as helping highlight some of the techniques used to sell products to children, representation issues - including the way that TV ad children differ from their real-life counterparts - can help parents talk to their offspring about how adverts work.

Early Advertising

The reason that the earliest nineteenth adverts hardly mentioned children at all is simple: unless you were born to a rich family, you were probably too busy working to care about the latest toys and games. This began to change with the advent of compulsory education and reforms designed to put an end to child labour. By the twentieth century children were increasingly viewed as young consumers, who could begin to make commercial choices within the family.

However, despite this promotion from worker to consumer, until the 1960s children in adverts were mostly 'seen but not heard'. Often, they were portrayed as passive, the cute window-dressing for adverts aimed at housewives. The first adverts for toys and games started to emerge, but children's activities were often closely controlled in adverts by authority figures such as parents or other adult guardians.

The Teenager

The end of National Service in the 1960s helped create a generation of young men and women who had more freedom (and more money in their pockets) than any previous generation of Britons. Add imported rock 'n' roll and home grown fashions to this heady mix and the teenager was born.

Advertisers were certainly taking notes on this new phenomenon. After all - they had a brand new target group with disposable cash who were wide open to marketing messages aimed directly at them. Suddenly the under-eighteens weren't joined at the hip with their families any more. Print adverts featured in the new colour supplements showed teens away from the family unit, judging their lifestyles against those of their peers rather than their parents.

The seismic effect the birth of the teenager had on advertising also helped change the way the teens' young brothers and sisters were perceived too. Though children weren't quite ready to enjoy the same autonomy teens had in adverts - they could at least be seen playing outside the family home.

Modern Advertising And Contemporary Regulations

In today's advertising world children no longer need adults to frame their needs and desires. Modern adverts are aspirational - portraying children onscreen that contemporary children are expected to emulate. However, though the kids onscreen don't seem to require adult input, regulators work hard to ensure that their antics won't harm real-life children.

For instance, the Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that children should not be shown in unsafe situations that kids at home might try to copy. This rule has been applied to a number of adverts including one showing a child performing a somersault on a sofa and another, perhaps more worryingly, showing kids playing in a wrecker's yard.

The Future

As children get more sophisticated (and grow up ever-earlier) the way children are represented in adverts looks set to evolve even further. The question for regulators and parents is - how sophisticated do we want kids in adverts to get? As advertising characters such as the Bratz dolls start to tap into pre-teen sexuality, can we really let childish consumers' innocence be eroded any further?