Friday, January 12, 2018

Does advertisers have a moral duty to avoid stereotyping?


Advertisers use stereotypes of people to persuade. Because of that, the debate is becoming bigger that as a form of mass media, advertisement creators should have moral duty to avoid stereotyping people. In my personal opinion, I disagree this statement. The reason why the idea "advertisers should have the moral duty to avoid stereotyping people" is the size of mass media is huge, therefore it might give stereotypes to the consumers while they watch the advertisements. However, if the consumer gets stereotypes based on what they watched advertisements on YouTube or television, that is because of their gullible personality, not because of the advertisement. In that case, young children are more gullible then adults, therefore the duty is on adults around the children. For example, if some advertisement shows stereotype in their commercial and young kids have watched it, their parents have the duty to tell them the reason why the advertisers have used the stereotype to persuade, and tell them to not to have the stereotype because of the advertisement. However, this education at home is not working well. As kids are getting more closer to the mobile phones and SNS as time flews, they get more time using their devices then talking to their parents face to face. Because of that, children get easily exposed to stereotyped advertisements, and they also get stereotyped ideas in their mind. The worse thing is, if the stereotype gets recognized by younger age, it is easier to fix. However, as time goes, people tend to have more time on their devices compared to having conversations with people offline, therefore it becomes a vicious cycle. For example, now in South Korea, students who are between 14 to 18 are too much affected by the stereotyped commercials, now they think the ideal look of women are pale skin color, red lips, big eyes- especially they use colored contact lenses to make their pupils look bigger. Which leads to another bad vicious cycle, that teenagers don't have much money on their hands, they search for cheaper items, which doesn't have any information about health effects. 

Of course, the advertisers are the one who made the advertisement stereotyped, therefore they should be changing their commercials to not to be too stereotyped. However, as consumer's sight, the advertisements should be attractive, natural, and unaffected. Also, it has to be more attractive compared to other competitors, they need to create their commercial more stimulate and sensational. I personally tell my friends that commercials are made to convince you to buy their products, not to tell you the ideal type of people, therefore you all need to get more self-attachment and confidence about yourselves.

1 comment:

  1. Nice argument. Can't really distinguish what side you are on though. Because in the beginning you are really against advertisements and stereotyping but then towards the end you say that they should be changed to an extent?
    "I personally tell my friends that commercials are made to convince you to buy their products, not to tell you the ideal type of people, therefore you all need to get more self-attachment and confidence about yourselves." - this part made me laugh. We find attractive things, obviously, attractive. And that's what they use in advertisements. So that attractiveness becomes our ideal. Yes, I think people should be more accepting of their appearance.

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