What is a subliminal message?
Subliminal messages and perception is the mind control where an individual or group of individuals can be controlled without their awareness. This is
a way for people to keep control of others or a group of individuals
without them noticing. This has now become worse because companies
now target children and teens more than before. The influence of
media on children extends into how they view themselves, others, and
their behavior.
Why are they created?
The first subliminal advertising dates back to 1957. James Vicary, a market researcher, inserted the words "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coca-Cola" into a movie. The
words appeared for a short amount of time, but were enough for the subconscious
to pick up, and too short for the audience to be aware of it. Vicary’s ads supposedly created an 18.1%
increase in Coke sales and a 57.8% increase in popcorn sales. However, it all
turned out to be a lie; nonetheless, experiments have shown that subliminal
messages actually can affect behavior in small ways.
Subliminal messages would not exist if social media would not be evolving as fast as it is. It’s impossible to reject and hide from these new forms and media. The media could be used as a positive way, but unfortunately there is always that one person who wants to be in control.
How do they work?
Advertising is now full of images, symbols, colors, words and body language that send of hidden messages related to consumers cultural background and personal experiences. To create credibility they use actors in white smocks because in many societies consumers associate white smocks with doctors. Some products in which subliminal messages have been used as beer products, beverages, tobacco products, and music that end up having an effect on people’s behavior. There has been many studies conducted to determinate the effect of subliminal messages on people`s behavior.
Why target kids?
Advertisers have used every resource they have to become “persuasion masters” and find a way to insert their messages in to peoples’ mind, knowing that information will stay and that everyone falls for it. Subliminal messages are directed to everyone, but the easiest targets are children. Children start watching television and listening to the radio from a young age. What parents do not know is that they are exposing their children to subliminal messages. Advertisers are not the only ones that use these types of influences, so do programs like cartoons and shows.
Advertising & Food.
McDonald's like many other food industry's have a very good way of attracting it's younger customers to its doors and drive through. This food industry is an example of why children today are largely becoming obese. What is being done here is that the children are being directly targeted by the toy they receive every time they purchase their happy meal or kids meal. The children are to distracted by their toy and eating their meal to understand that they have fallen into the advertising industry's trap. The key that big corporations have on it's younger audience is to find what the biggest action figure or movie at the time and promote it so that they keep making money not worrying about the health risk their young consumers are getting themselves into.
In this image the title lays out that children are headed in a health risk direction. Like the child in the image he is naive that the food he is holding will have sever consequences when he grows up like many other children. The image in relationship to the media shows how if the promotion of unhealthy eating diets keep going on so will the number of health risk in children. It is also a good way to grab the parents attention toward the issue to make them realize if they want to see their children having to struggle with being over weight or suffering harsher health consequences if they do nothing. This should make many other viewers concerned with the issue if they directly are impacted of if they know someone impacted by promoted junk food.
The Behaviors of children & the media
In this image you can see a glimpse of the psychological part of behaviors of children toward imitation. This is an image of the famous Bobo doll experiment conducted by Albert Bandura. In this experiment both female and male adults were asked to act aggressively to the bobo doll in front of young children, later on the children were left alone with that doll to see if the behaviors they observed would be picked up by them. The results clearly shown in the image on the left show that the children clearly imitated the aggressive behaviors of the adults. How does this relate to the media? This relates to the media, because like imitated behaviors in real life children watch many things on television that no one knows for a fact if they will or will not imitate the bad things they watch on tv like bad eating habits and gender roles portrayed by the media.
The media has for many years now advertised to us adults and young children the roles of each gender role. This image is a great example of how the media has promoted the life achievements of a woman being good for two things cooking and being a housewife. The media today does not do a good job of advertising woman in a different view. It also does not let young girls see themselves as anything other than the stereotypes shown to them in the media like a scientist, doctor, fire woman or business woman. The same goes for young boys in today's media the stereotypes shown to them is that men have to be strong, attracted to woman and be able to support a family and work. This is an issue because it is a cycle of stereotypes being repeated by the media and if it id not stopped the way children view themselves will be completely distorted growing up.
Sometimes you can see the impact of media right away, but most of the time the impact is not so immediate or obvious. It might occur slowly as children see and hear certain messages over and over. Kids spend more hours on the media than any other person, "... they spend more time watching videos on their mobile devices than aim other group-seven hours and forty eight minutes per month, compared with five hours and twenty minutes for adults aged 25-34. (Pham, 2013). Because teens and younger kids spend more time watching TV, playing games which all involve advertisements and commercials they are suitable to see them more than once. This cause them to be influence, to believe something or buy something without noticing why in reality they want it or think the way they do.
