Childhood Representation on Television Advertising

Abstract

Advertisements sell a lifestyle, a feeling, and a behavior as well as a product to the viewer. Competition in the market is so intense that they feel as much as the rational utility of the product, and they become marketable. For this reason, the child has been turned into a consumable object. When the ways in which children are represented in the media are examined, it is often the case that the opinions expressed by the children are used to make adults laugh, or the use of children's miserable photographs and descriptions of emotional exploitation of children is popularized, if there is no contribution from the child's self-esteem or adult's respect for the child. In this study, the representation of childhood, which is turned into a consumption object in the media, is explained in detail. In the content of the study, the advertisement was briefly defined, the concept of child and childhood clarified, and then how the child was represented in television commercials in Turkey was shown.