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Television is a major part of people’s lives. Children as young as 18 months can recognize product logos; however, they have poor abilities to understand that advertisements are motivated out of a desire for profit and distinguish adequately between programming and advertising (Pine, et al. 2002, p.530). This fact isn’t lost on advertisers, they spend large amounts of money a year pushing products and services aimed at children. An investigation shows that children now watch an average of 40,000 TV commercials a year, and the increased consumption of fast food parallels the rise in obesity rates among children (Bigda & Carolyn, 2005, p.91). Aims of this project are to focus on research of the adverse effect of advertising made on children, and the necessities as well as effectiveness in protecting children with the use of advertising regulations; moreover, to find out some other ways to protect children from the harms caused by advertising and some suggestions to compensate for the deficiencies in advertising regulations.

Project details
Introductory background
There is no doubt that media messages influence the values that make up our character; and the media--TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, movies, songs, and video games, alluse powerful techniques to get our attention and to get their messages across in the most effective way. Of course, there is no exception of advertisements. The average American child will have watched 15,000 hours of TV, as compared with having spent 11,000 hours in the classroom, by the time he or she is graduated from high school. (Rothenberg & Michael B, 1985, p.148) Furthermore, children in the U.S. have been exposed to 350,000 commercials, 55% of which are for edibles, 65% are heavily sugared products (Rothenberg & Michael B, 1985, p.148).All those data above indicate that many children are watching a significant amount of TV, so that they are exposed to a large number of the selling messages of advertisers (more than half of ads. are food) via the TV. Young people today become consumers at an earlier age than their parents used to do. Indeed, they become consumers in their own right while they are still children (Ahava & Palojoki, 2004, p.372). However, for younger children, they have a limited understanding of commercial markets, and are unaware that advertisements are motivated by profit. They are most likely confused by the program and commercial material, and lack the cognitive skills to distinguish reality from fantasy; thus, they are easily influenced and cannot recognize advertising from regular programming (Pine, et al. 2002, pp.529-530). Additionally, in order to attract more children’s attention so that get profit, the food industries now link food with entertainment, especially with movie or cartoon characters. Brand-name foods and drinks appear on toy cars or helicopters and fast-food chains issue “educational” card games, which are fun and novel to children; for instance, one of the food industries incorporates a lollipop into a battery-operated handle. The lollipop spins or the toy is activated when “your tongue turns it on” (McLellan, Faith., 2002, p.1001, para.1); nevertheless, the food producers and t