My opinion

Whether marketing to kids is okay really depends on how old the kid actually is. Advertising to a teenager isn't the same thing as advertising to a five year old, because by the time someone is in high school they can usually tell when something is just an ad trying to get their money. Teens know that the influencer holding up a drink got paid to do it, and they know a commercial is trying to sell them something, so they can think about it and decide for themselves. A little kid can't really do that yet. Young children often can't even tell the difference between an ad and the actual show they're watching, so when a cartoon character is telling them a cereal is awesome, they just believe it. That's a big gap, and it doesn't make sense to treat both of those situations like they're the same. So instead of saying all marketing to children is automatically good or automatically bad, it makes way more sense to have different rules for different ages. Companies could be allowed to advertise pretty normally to older kids and teens, who can handle it and are already making some of their own buying choices, but have much stricter limits when the audience is really young and doesn't understand what's happening to them. That kind of approach feels more realistic than just banning everything or allowing everything, because it actually matches how kids grow and start to think for themselves. It also puts the most protection where it's needed most, on the youngest kids, while still letting businesses advertise to the people who can actually understand their ads.

Written By: Amelia R