Mothers' Opinions of TV Snack Advertising Aimed At Children Regarding Its Overall Amount, Content, and Influence On Their Children's Health

Background: This exploratory study investigated the opinions of mothers who have at least one child between the ages of 7 and 12 about TV snack/fast-food advertising targeted at children. The mothers’ opinions were assessed concerning the amount of the advertising, the advertisements’ content, the advertising’s influences on children’s health, and the need for stricter regulation of the content.

Program background: The present research also examined whether there is social distance or third person effect in the mothers’ opinions about the influence of TV snack/fast-food advertising on children by asking their opinions about the effects on their own children, their friends’ children, and the children of people they don’t know.

Evaluation Methods and Results: The results showed that most mothers in this study believed that there were too many TV snack/fast-food advertisements for their children to avoid, and the content of the advertisements should be improved even if this required stricter regulation. However, it was also found that the mothers believed the children of people they don’t know were more negatively influenced by the exposure to the TV snack/fast-food advertising compared to their own children.

Conclusions: The third person effect in the context of TV snack/fast-food advertising aimed at children was observed. The complexity of mothers’ opinions about TV snack/fast-food advertising was found as well. The mothers hesitated to say that the TV snack/fast-food advertising was the most important influence on their children’s eating habits. Even though the mothers were generally negative about the impact of TV snack/fast-food advertising on their children and wanted to see more regulation of content, they did not think that the adverting was the most important factor influencing their children’s eating habits and health.

Implications for research and/or practice: They thought that they were and should be the most important mediator of how many TV advertisements their children watch and what kinds of food their children eat.