Older children and adolescents in order to distance themselves from younger children often claim to be unimpressed and cynical about ads. Heavy viewers however tend to like and trust commercials and express stronger behavioural intentions towards products advertised. Researchers have not been able to evolve any consensus about the eventual effects of advertising on children's behaviour, though they deem it to be a matter of crucial importance. At the most they make out that there is a short term increase in the demand and consumption of sugared products as a consequence of advertising, especially of the brands heavily advertised. The gulf between attitude and behaviour and the indeterminacy of decision making in myriads of social and economic situations all pose difficult and perhaps insurmountable problems to come to any definite conclusion as to what goes on in the real world.
More research is needed for credible answers.
Again it can't be said with any certainty whether children hold more materialistic values because of the television commercials. Indeed it would be difficult to put this general question to test given the virtually universal presence of advertising from the cradle to the grave. There is however an emerging agreement among the experts that controls on television commercials primarily targeted at children need some tightening. For example, care has to be taken that television commercials don't make appeals that contend that, if children possess a product, they are better than their peers or that in lacking it they will not be accepted by their peers. The child's feelings and motives must not be manipulated-something that is easier said than enforced.