Restricting on Misleading Advertisements

Nowadays, advertisements are a part of our everyday life in most households. Essentially, advertisers have the power to promote positive impact or negative impact to our society. Unfortunately, the advertiser had caused many negative social impacts. Indeed, this controversial issue is now a public focus. As a consumer, we can not do anything about misinformation in advertisements; therefore, it is government’s responsibility to restrict the misleading advertisements. Misleading advertisements carry many negative social impacts; namely, giving wrong concept of products, bring violent content to children, and portraying women as sex objects.

Advertising has been blamed for a great variety of negative social impacts. One of the major criticisms received by advertising is that it forces people to purchase goods or services they don't really need. Often advertising shows negative emotions such as fear, anxiety or guilt upon the consumer. Besides, advertising plays with our human emotions and takes advantage of them, using them as simply another technique to sell their goods or services. From some advertisements, it seems buying brand names and driving an expensive car may encourage one to act on his desire for being wealthy. Moreover, advertising encourages people to buy products by making people to think that purchasing and consuming are the major activities of their lives. For theses reasons, I think it is government’s responsibility to stop misleading advertisements.

Not only do advertisements give people the wrong concept of products, it also brings violent content to children. Due to many aggressive scenes from commercials, children might easily learn from them by just watching TV. On the other hand, children who watch these types of commercials may feel scared and frightened that something might happen to them. Undoubtedly, this will make children having nightmare at night. Also, there are some commercials about drugs, alcohol, and cigarette. In my opinion, children and teens are not mature enough to aware that drugs, alcohol, and cigarette are addictive and harmful, even teens know, they will still ignore about the harmfulness. For theses reasons, I think it is government’s responsibility to stop misleading advertisements.