Ethical Considerations on Advertising to Children

This paper focuses on one of the most controversial areas of advertising, namely advertising to children. Two important issues underline the analysis we propose: on the one hand, the fact that children represent a category of consumers extremely vulnerable to advertising messages; on the other hand, children are a preferred target of advertising and marketing strategies, because they are a category of consumers with growing financial power. Our approach seeks to address from an ethical perspective the practice of advertising to children, emphasizing the necessity both of a balanced relationship between the regulation and the self-regulation of specific activities and of the development of media education and skills. At the same time, the analysis highlights the idea that in order to better approach the practice of advertising to children, we must take into account the specific conditions of postmodern society, where the impact of advertising is increasingly complex and where the advertising communication model has penetrated important social spheres.