The Persuaders: Ads

      Advertisements have played an extreme role in the lives of all growing up in the 21st century. I would access the amount of advertising I see on a day to day basis as far too much. Anytime I am on my phone one of the first things I see when traveling to Instagram or YouTube are ads. These ads are often if not always tailored towards my own interests but they rarely do they intrigue me enough to watch until they have ended. Ads also bombard me outside of my phone through other technologies such as computers, television, billboards, and more. In my opinion, the level of advertisement in today's economy has been allowed to get more and more out of hand in the last 10-20 years. It has risen to a level where the average person views as many as 5,000 ads per day compared to 500 per day back in the 1970's. This idea that companies have to convert any "blank space" they can find into an advertisement is absurd. An ability to "opt out" of ads seen on smart phones and computers should be given and if it had existed before, the ads seen per day would most likely decrease by half of what it is today. One can only hope that companies will decrease their output of ads but that seems unlikely seeing as people are still persuaded by the trickery they seen on a screen.