Children's attention and engagement with television commercials by age group

Children Could Lose Their Attention on TV Advertisements

While watching TV, children could create their own imaginary world and totally engrossed in it for a period of time. Recent survey finds out that children watch their favorite program on TV for about four or more hours every day. It is assumed that television has brought hazardous effect on children's attitude, intelligence, and social acceptance this way. However, based on my recent observation, kids are not totally engrossed on the program. My subjects show that during the program they also insert several different tasks such as inviting friends (other people over). Why do some children lose interest in television programming during commercials and begin other task? Is it because they lack of concentration span as most children do? Are there any other factors from the commercial itself that prevent them from watching? The research will combine behavior observation and questionnaire method to determine how children really feel and think about commercials and what reasons why they leave them.

Introduction

Children usually refuse to leave their favorite program whatever happens, but I notice that every time my kids have friend over every time a commercial comes on. Parents use several methods like providing educational toys, magazine and friends to socialize with their children to reduce children's excessive TV viewing. The reason why they will leave some parts of the TV show is the question here.

Griffiths (1992) shows a research by Gaines and Esserman that believes that as children grow older, they will learn how advertisement differs from regular programming and become skeptical to the commercials. The reason could be because of boredom viewing the repetitive materials for the whole day or other reason because they find different perspective between what is seen on TV and what the real life is.

Based on Collins's study she finds children become suspicious on "how truthful" advertisements are. They learn - and show important result on the research - that they understand that advertisements try to persuade them to buy something, occasionally in dishonest manner. It means they understand the aim of selling of the producer and claim that perhaps their parents are more affected by the ads, not them.

Proposed Procedure assume that the age group of children is a significant variable here in which the degree of maturity and learning enthusiasm differ from each group. It will be necessary to have combined exposure measurement to obtain the data, subject exposure to TV viewing and questionnaire or interview for the younger subject group. Subject will be divided into three age groups: under four years old, 4-7 years old, and 7 to 10 years old. If possible each group will contain half boys and half girls members who already known each other. They will be exposed to their own daily habits of TV viewing at their own home as usual, so there is no strange or new environmental shock. They will watch their favorite series, not a new program since it is assumed to give them new attractant factor to the subject.

During the program an observer will need to take notes on how the children behave during commercial break. Since children are doing this at their convenient time and feels nothing different with their ordinary task, it is predicted that they also have several other tasks or objects that usually they have around. Some predicted actions might include starting a chat with other family member, poking their partners and having mischief time, tipping a snack, heading to kitchen to find some other things to eat, having their heads in the clouds, falling asleep, being busy with their toys, books, or tapes, or even starting a phone call. In other case I have ever found that some students study for exam while watching TV, since it relieved their boredom and anxiety before an exam. The observer will record everything during the experiment and the possible factors that may trigger the kids on doing that.

The second procedure is by asking the subjects to fill in questionnaire or answer questions related to the behavior. This could include multiple choice and open-ended questions. The questions will cover but not limited to the following aspects: Do they perform such behavior spontaneously and frequently or not? Do they have preferences in TV commercials or not? Do they find advertisement repulsively interrupting their favorite program or do they have no special attention to this? Will they do the same thing when they watch TV alone? What are their favorite commercials and what are their dislikes? Does any commercial bring them any meaning, e. g. depicting belongings they could compare to friends at school, things they want to buy or get as gift, depicting their favorite newsmakers, containing cute jingles they could recite?

Conclusion

The result of the experiment is expected to give picture on how children really feel and respond to TV commercials. When subject shows that they could do other tasks when commercials on air, it proves that television does not appeal that much for children. The frequency of the leaving and the reason why they do it might also show how children cope with their short attention span.

There is also possibility that the data does not show significant difference among age groups or even show negative responds on the hypothesis that children lose interest during commercials. According to Center for Media Education survey, children see around 20,000 TV commercials a year; around 1 from 5 hours they spend to watch TV. Although "most children younger than 6 do not understand that the purpose of advertising is to sell a product," they really spend much time on that and find such commercials are interesting to memorize. Those who watch 4 or more hours a day are "more likely to believe advertising claims they see," that means they must have made their TV commercial break enjoyable.

According to Palmer, research shows that television still freezes some kids to draw away from their surroundings. The kids become unresponsive to the surrounding and glued to the TV screen, reenacting the scenes, which is possible including the commercials.

DeGaetano (1998) cited dr. Jerome Singer, finding that commercials are used in "constantly changing short sequences, holds our attention by a sensory bombardments that maximizes orienting responses." This will most likely be the reason why the younger group may not show significant difference.