Advertising has a pervasive influence on children and adolescents. Advertising is mass media content intended to persuade audiences of readers, viewers, or listeners to act on products, services, and ideas. “The idea is to drive consumer behavior in a particular way regarding a product, service or concept” (What is Advertising 1). Many young people see more than forty thousand advertisements a year on television alone and are increasingly exposed to advertising on the Internet, in magazines and in schools. The advertising industry spends twelve billion dollars a year on advertisements aimed at children, bombarding young audiences with persuasive messages through the media. This targeting occurs because advertising is a two hundred and fifty billion dollar a year industry with nine hundred thousand brands to sell, and children and adolescents are attractive consumers (Childrem, Adolscents and Advertising 1). Advertising has a negative effect on all human beings, but their main target is children; therefore, there should be less advertising exposed through the media, magazines and schools. Because children are more impressionable than adults, they represent fertile ground for advertisers. When children have role models, it is usually the people who appear on the television screen in front of them. Children will imitate the poor quality of their role model's actions and this will later become their future lifestyle. How did it all start? In the Middle Ages most people could not read, but pictures of clothes, shoes, horseshoes or bags of flour on signs indicated the tailor, shoemaker, blacksmith or miller available as service providers. As the decades passed, advertising grew as the relative wealth of nations expanded. The ad developed... mid-paper... in 2013."Kid's Tv." Children's television. Np, nd Web. November 18, 2013.Lepi, Katie. "Edudemic." Edudemic. NP, 30 August 2012. Web. 15 November 2013."Marketing aimed at children." - Research documents. Np, nd Web. November 16, 2013. http://www.allfreeessays.com/essays/Marketing-To-Children-Essay/239427.html.“Media Promotion of Consumerism.” Research paper on consumerism by free media Snowtonka. Np, November 18, 2013. http://www.bignerds.com/papers/41430/Media-s-Promotion-Of-Consumerism/.Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Print.Supersize Me. Dir. Morgan Spurlock. Perf. Morgan Spurlock and Alexandra Jamieson. Paramount, 2004. DVD."Tobacco Advertising". Politics.co.uk. Np, nd Web. November 12, 2013."What is advertising?" What is advertising? Np, nd Web. November 12 2013.