Most of us of course like to watch cartoon, especially a funny cartoon. Nowadays we can easily watch cartoon in TV, DVD, or internet. But can we know whether the cartoon is a good one or contain a bad influence for us? I posted some cartoons video from youtube. Maybe you will think that the video is funny, but do you think it is suitable for children to watch?
We all know that children like watch cartoons at home, but do parents know what kind of cartoon their watch? As children grow these media influences become even more powerful. The media influences on children is not always a good influence and parents need to counteract this influence by discussing and monitoring what their children are exposed to.
There is no doubt that the media has an impact on a child, but does it really influence them to act out even though they know it’s wrong? Is the media that influential that it can make a child do something they would never think of doing, if not seen on the television? According to Dr. Susan Villani (1999), “there is an established body of evidence documenting the troubling behavioral effects of repeated exposure to media violence.”
In the Shin Chan video, it shows some nudity and also how this young generation doesn’t have any respect to the parents. Maybe we will think that the film is funny at some part, but is it a good example on how to teach our child about respect? In Simpson film, it shows about bully at school. Is it how we want our children do at school? And for the last film is showing violence. Maybe at first we will think that it is a cute cartoon, but without knowing the content we can be misjudge and let the children to watch it.
It has been suggested that cartoons need to have stricter ratings control stating exactly what type of content is included. It is recommended that parents occasionally watch cartoons with their kids and comment on the characters behaviour that they do and don't like, talk about the consequences of real world violence, and finally parents should try to limit the viewing of extremely violent cartoons. Also the media needs to try to improve the quality of their cartoons and be aware that young impressionable children and watching, learning and imitating.
References
Villani, S. (1999). Violence in the media. Journal of the
5 comments:
Yeah the problem of cartoons and the bad influence it has on children is becoming increasingly evident. i often wonder what happened to good cartoons or child shows like magic school bus and bananas in pyjamas. i was shocked when i watched the simpsons recently, it had phrases like "what the f....family" (obviously they arent kidding anyone on what they are trying to say) and things related to sexual topics even. We need to let children BE children and not let them grow up too fast. Very often these things will influence them as they grow up, and these are not values and morals we want instilled in them (bullying..disrespecting elders...using vulgar words etc.)
it's not only cartoons we need to be aware of in terms of violence and tainting our children's mind with the ideas they want. even ealier we need to be aware of stories such as snow-white, hansel & gretel, little red ridinghood and similar stories which portray elderly as scary, and wanting to cause harm to little children and also show the bad guys always in dark colours, either making their skin dark or dressing them in dark clothes. all these clues will affect how our children grow up and perceive the world. I find it ery sad how many parents continue the cycle of reading these stories to their children without being aware of their implications on the elderly and dark-skinned people.
i'm not sure abotu others, but i would call that inorance. i already know i will make sure to not expose my children to these horrible stories. i want them t grow up with as open a mind as i can.
Cartoons have definetly evolved since our time; I don't remember any one ever complaining about unpleasent themes of overly-violent nature in the cartoons of the late 80s and early 90s such as My Little Pony, the Care Bears, Tail Spin and ever Transformers, even though the latter had scenes of violence they were nothing compared to the scenes shown in day-time television today. Themes on television can subconsciously effect impressionable children; cartoons have evolved to a more adult level today with creators subtely catering more to mature humour which satisfies themselves as well as other adults.(how many times have we watched cartoons and seen subtle innuendos and humour only adults would get yet buried secretly in children's programns?)
There is a noticable similarity in cartoons. The prince, an ideal man who is rich and handsome and the princess, an ideal woman who is kind, gentle, elegant and beautiful.
agree. we know the cartoons bring happiness into our life, meanwhile, bad influence as well. I think the biggest problem relates to the bad influence for children is the imitation. Children may imitate cartoons behavior and perform similar behavior, (may good or bad), but some behavior is very dangerous even can hurt themselves or others. And some children may copy sexual behavior from cartoons, smoking as well. They probably do not understand what the problem if that behavior has certain bad impact, they may just feel the closer imitation the much happer.
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