A big part of keeping children smoke free is to attack tobacco’s advertising capabilities. Children have malleable minds that are easily shaped by external influences.
Influences that affect children and encourages them to smoke
How does Advertising Impact Children
They soak them up like a sponge, storing up the behaviors and habits that will characterise their adult life. Thus, children are much more responsive to images, cartoons, and advertising campaigns than are adults. For as long as tobacco has been advertising, they have associated smoking with independence, sophistication, beauty, and fun. While these concepts primarily target teens and adults, children are often left absorbing, consciously or unconsciously, that being a non smoker is not the way to be if you want to be in the in-crowd or achieve success.
Children Worry About Loved Ones Smoking
The graphic images on packages are often quite confronting and worrying to children. Children love their parents and these images really frighten children of parents or loved ones who are smokers. One of the main reasons people give when they are quitting is the impact on kids and loved ones. A common quote,”Johnny asked one day what he would do when he dies.” This really went to the heart of the smoker and really the impact their smoking was having on their child.
Do Tobacco Companies Target Children?
While tobacco companies have always maintained that they do not target children specifically, these claims were put to the test during the 10 years that Camel’s Joe Camel reigned over billboards, t-shirts, and cigarette packages across the globe. Joe Camel seemed almost a deliberate attempt at keeping children from pursuing smoke free lifestyles. According to a 1991 report by the Journal of the American Medical Association, children were able to match pictures of Joe Camel with a cigarette just as often as they were able to match Mickey Mouse with the Disney logo.
Joe Camel’s cartoon images had imprinted into the minds of many children during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, and the AMA study showed just how integrated he had become with the fabric of society.
It’s hard to stay smoke free if cigarettes have a cartoon just as identifiable as Mickey Mouse, and this line of reasoning ultimately led to the abolition of Joe Camel. But Big Tobacco advertising remains, and so does its tie to leading children away from smoke free lifestyles.
Advertising Inadvertently Encourages Teenagers to Smoke
Children and adolescents are more than twice as likely to light up a cigarette from one of the three most advertised tobacco brands, Marlboro, Camel, and Newport. A 2011 study conducted by the Dartmouth Medical School concludes that “specific images from tobacco ads predict” and encourage smoking among teenagers and children.
Though there is plenty of evidence that supports the claim that tobacco advertising leads children away from smoke free lifestyles, there are still many skeptics, and many are not card-carrying members of Big Tobacco. For example, a lot has been done, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, to eradicate the power of tobacco advertising, and still smoking is on the rise.
Advertising’s Influence on children is correct
Advertising is not the only factor in keeping children smoke free. It is up to parents and educators to talk to kids about the dangers of tobacco use, and to be good role models themselves by refraining from smoking in front of their children.
A parent’s Influence is More Powerful than any Advertisement
Additionally, remaining smoke free is ultimately a choice that each individual must face, a choice not to engage in the bad habit, but instead choose a smoke free lifestyle.
Therefore, it is important to combine restrictions on tobacco advertising with personal responsibility. Both contribute to the delicate balance of influencing children to remain smoke free. A big part of keeping children smoke free is to attack tobacco’s advertising capabilities.
Children have malleable minds that are easily shaped by external influences. They soak them up like a sponge, storing up the behaviors and habits that will characterize their adult life. Thus, children are much more responsive to images, cartoons, and advertising campaigns than are adults. For as long as tobacco has been advertising, they have associated smoking with independence, sophistication, beauty, and fun. While these concepts primarily target teens and adults, children are often left absorbing, consciously or unconsciously, that smoke free is not the way to be if you want to be in the in-crowd or achieve success.
Are you willing to let smoking cigarettes continue to control YOUR LIFE?
If not – Book your appointment today and make that commitment to be free from the smoking habit. You can also call 1300 619 684 (It will be answered with Master Your Life Power, Life Coach to Quit Smoking)
You will know for yourself that at the end of the session, you are now a non-smoker.
You won’t feel as if you are giving anything up, or having to cope with not having cigarettes.
You will be satisfied and happy that you have now done what so many people only wish to do.
So what are you waiting for??
Start Now on Your journey to be a non-smoker
Book your appointment today and make that commitment to be free from the smoking habit. You can also call 1300 619 684 (It will be answered with Master Your Life Power, Life Coach to Quit Smoking)