A longitudinal study examined both the short term and the long term effects of television advertising on the development of adolescents' consumption-related orientations. Questionnaires were administered to 556 adolescents in a number of schools in a southern state; a second wave of questionnaires was administered to a subsample of 230 of these students approximately 14 months later. The items on the questionnaires elicited information concerning the respondents' (1) consumer role perceptions, (2) consumer activity, (3) materialism, (4) sex role conceptions, (5) and television advertising viewing. The resulting data suggested that television advertising had both short and long term effects on consumer socialization. Some negative effects appeared to occur directly, especially among families in which communication about consumption was low. The data also showed that interpersonal processes might condition an adolescent's attention to and learning from television, causing both negative and positive effects on socialization. Finally, the results suggested that the long term effects of television differ from those in the short run, indicating that researchers should separate the two variables in future studies. (FL)