The effects of chldren's awareness of advertising litercy on their attitudes towards advertising

Advertising plays a crucial role in today's communication landscape, serving various functions such as providing information about products and services, establishing a connection between consumers and products and persuading consumers to adopt certain behaviors or viewpoints. The rapid advancements in communication technologies have expanded the avenues for advertising, with new media becoming a significant platform for advertisers to reach consumers alongside traditional media. Children and young people, being active users of new media, have become a prime target for advertisers due to their influence on family purchasing decisions and their role as consumers themselves. To empower children, who are frequently exposed to advertisements, in resisting persuasive tactics, it is important for them to perceive the persuasive messages within advertisements, understand the intentions behind the sales tactics, recognize different types of advertisements across various media, and comprehend the target audience of each advertisement. Additionally, developing the ability to distinguish between needs and wants and the line between reality and fantasy is a crucial step towards becoming conscious consumers. Therefore, advertising literacy skills is essential. Based on these assumptions, an advertising literacy course was conducted for 3rd grade students over a duration of 4 weeks, and a comparison was made between the advertising literacy knowledge and attitudes towards advertising among those who participated in the course and those who did not. The findings revealed that children who underwent the advertising literacy course exhibited greater success in recognizing the sales and persuasion intentions, sources, and target audiences of advertisements, and they also adopted a more skeptical approach towards advertising. Keywords: Children, Advertising, Advertising Literacy, Persuasion Knowledge