That we should not target children in advertisements

So in the final part of this debate, there have been a number of key themes that have been echoed throughout the debate, the key themes that both sides wish to win in order to win this debate. 1. The theme of implications arising from advertising, that advertising negatively impacts children In this theme, we have argued about the negative connotations that are manifested by advertising. We drew out the example of bullying. Con attempted to rebut this by pointing out it as a 'straw man' and pointing out how connections fail to exist. However, connections DO exist. We must try to focus on how both advertising and bullying creates consequences for individuals at a young age. Yes, advertising promotes consumerism, but consumerism is a very broad issue. Advertising creates want in children. It encourages children to pursue the latest innovative toy. This leads to competition between children, which in turn can lead to cases of bullying. While this is a relatively small link, the biggest link between the two is that both share negative consequences and that is what we have been trying to stress throughout the second speech. In the second speech, we narrowed the debate to the idea of advertising from fast food joints promoting poor dieting and health issues. The con then moves on to reply to this by pointing out that 'parents failed to give a proper education.' Ladies and gentlemen, this is a MAJOR contradiction! The Con spends a significant amount of their rebuttal hinging around the positive effects of parents on children, but then moves on to quote how there are a certain amount of parents who neglect to do so. They raised the point of parents but effectively made that argument redundant by proving it wrong in certain cases. Hence, the home-schooling point in addition to the point about parents helping children out is rendered redundant. However, even if this was not the case, parents should not be burdened with the expectation that they have to spend a considerable amount of time lecturing and educating their children. Parents do not live the easy life, they have to spend extensive periods of time at their workplace in order to make a solid living for their family. We should not be imposing extra regulations and burdens on these parents to justify the state's laziness. Again, repeating earlier, we need to cut this off from the stem, and that is something the state can do. 2. The morality of advertisements targeting children, the weak This theme has been poorly explored throughout the debate, however the Con has not once attacked nor responded to our idea that advertisements are immorally targeting children, so we have common ground, in favour of the Pro. Advertisements targeting children is unethical, something that both sides have agreed on. 3. Whether this issue is something that is reduced over time Con attempted to resolve this theme by pointing out that without learning 'morale lessons' from their childhood, they are unable to make better decisions. Yes, this is partly true. What the con however, failed to raise up is the point that there are schools. Schools are here for a reason. -The con attempts to justify their reasoning with the idea that parents are the sole source of education. But again, in theme 1, the idea of using parents as the sole or main source of education is highly flawed. -However, even if we do use schools to educate children, children have an active time of around 6 hours away from school every day (not including sleeping), and around 12 hours on weekends. This is around 50-55 hours every week away from school, becoming increasingly susceptible to inappropriate advertisements. -We can link this to the drug issue prevalent in society. Drugs are commonly devalued and looked down upon, but there are laws restricting the use of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs to 18 years of age (or 21 in some countries). Why does the law do this? This is because the state believes that children have matured enough and gained enough knowledge from the educational system that they can make their own informed decisions. Parents cannot teach their children appropriately in a short amount of time. We should neither expect nor force them to. Drug dealers cannot target children because there is an explicit harm involved, while the harm with advertising is reduced to a certain extent, it lies around the same morals and we should not allow these companies to actively target children for the sake of greed and profit. Ladies and gentlemen, we should not allow these companies to target these children to satiate their own greed. This is one part of the status quo that is inherently flawed and we need to fix this. As we can firmly see, the three key themes of this debate fall on the pro side and this is why we are proud to propose.