What are cartoons? The original meaning of the word cartoon was in fine art. A rough sketch that was created prior to making a final painting or tapestry was the actual concept of a cartoon. However, this meaning has greatly evolved and the term cartoon now refers to humorous illustrations in animated films.
Animated cartoons have come a long way, gaining their actual popularity after the introduction of the world famous Walt Disney’s character, Mickey Mouse. However, with the passage of time, a lot of the other cartoons joined in, and today, there are over 1 million cartoons that are broadcasted on television.
These cartoons were created with the sole purpose of entertainment for the children and typically contained slapstick humor. But, the modern day cartoon is very different from what we saw earlier on. It now contains aggression as well as violence.
There are both good and bad cartoons, thus, their affects are both positive as well as negative. Positive effects would refer to being taught the lesson of love and affection, character building and education. What this paper focuses on, is the negative impact that these have on the children.
Effect of these cartoons can be divided into 3 categories, Physiological effects, Psychological effects and Imitated Behaviour. Physiological effects, as the term itself suggests refer to the body changes that occur due to watching these cartoons. How they effect the mind is regarded as the psychological effect and when they copy the behavior that is shown in the cartoons, they are imitating.
Excessive watching of cartoons can lead to a number of physiological problems in children. These problems are mainly caused by the colour that are used and the speed with which the image changes. It causes eye fatigue, seizures, stammering, and laziness which may later on, serve as a cause of obesity.
Cartoons usually use bright and flashy colours that attract children and are eye catching. However, if proper care is not taken and if the children are not made to watch television under the right conditions, it may tire their eyes eventually leading to eye fatigue and even make their eyesight weak. Watching TV screen for hours exposes the eye muscles to bright and colorful images resulting in the eye muscles getting weak and desensitized. The receptors are stimulated and become desensitized eventually becoming flaccid making it difficult for children to keep their eyes open. The pre-operational stage is very critical for the brain. Neuronal connections are being, destroyed and remade according to the stimulus being provided. If abnormal stimuli are being applied, it can impair normal brain development and abnormal neuronal connections are made giving way to long term behavioral deficits, slurring speech and poor comprehension. It can also damage the eye-sight badly and migraine headache. Thus, it should be made sure by the parents that when their children are watching cartoons, they should be made to sit at least 5 feet away from the television screen, and the room in which they are watching the T.V should not be pitch dark.
Watching cartoons for increased lengths of time can cause laziness in children. They get used to sitting for long duration of time adapting a sedentary lifestyle. By the age of 5, children become such enthusiastic viewers that they are no longer interested in any outdoor activity and spend most of their time indoors in front of the TV. Due to this, there is every possibility of their falling prey to obesity which is one of the biggest factor for hypertension and cardiac diseases.
Arguably the most significant impact of cartoons on children is psychological. A child’s mind is most susceptible to the message and the content that cartoons intend to showcase and deliver. So the effect of cartoons is more psychological than anything else. This is a very important fact because at such a tender age, a child’s mind works like a sponge and absorbs a great deal of whatever he is exposed to. It is a proven fact that a child’s personality and his perception of the world is formed in the early years of his childhood (before the age of 5), so exposing him/her to anything violent, unrealistic, bizarre and nonsensical will have an adverse effect on his entire being and his perception of the world around him, which will manifest itself in later life with devastating effects and vice versa. The precise reason why psychologist put so much emphasis on healthy upbringing of the child especially in the early stages of his childhood.
The subtle use of violence in cartoons has had such an impact on the younger generation that they have become exceedingly insensitive to the growing violence and suffering in the real world. This is predominantly because of early exposure of children to violence in cartoons, the prime example are Tom and Jerry and Ben 10. The amount of violence shown in the above mentioned cartoons and a list of other cartoons is beyond safe. It is in fact detrimental to their personality and general upbringing. This has severe implications, the fact that they have become so immune to the violence, they are less concerned, and possibly indifferent about the violence caused by social injustice and lawlessness, which automatically makes them irresponsible and unaware of their civil duties. For example the constant beating and thrashing shown in the cartoons is at times shown on the news channels, seems of no real concern to the younger generation since they have already seen it in a different form. This does not evoke hatred and anger in them when they watch such real violent content and unconsciously accept the violence as a norm of the society.
The other similar problem deals with the subtle use of sexual material in the cartoon either in visual or audio form or in the form of subliminal messages. The use of sexual of sexual content exposes the children at a very tender age, which does not yield productive results. They gradually become immune to the sexual differences between the opposite genders and do not realize that such content is not beneficial for them at such a young age. Who has not seen the famous animated lion king movie? Almost every child has seen it in his childhood. A closer look at the film yields that the word “sex” had been seen written in the sky with the help of stars. This cannot be a mere coincidence. It seems more like a conscious effort to condition children and make them aware of the word unconsciously, so the next time they see it they could relate to it.
In the cartoon little mermaid, the building structure in the background has been drawn in such a way as to indicate and be reflective of the male and female sexual organs in a very subtle and clever way. One cannot help but think the chances of it actually being a mere coincidence!
The argument that violence in cartoons make children less sensitive to violence in the real world has another very serious implication. The belief that violence is not “bad” it makes them more prone to applying it themselves in real life. This leads to aggression and anxiety in them at a young age and it increases with age. This has an adverse impact on the society at large. The aggressive attitude is a problem for the parents, teachers at school and young friends in general. Aggressive children are unsafe for younger siblings and their classmates. They are unpredictable and may even cause harm to themselves while indulging in an aggressive action. It is in fact the basic process of the human mind to get use to whatever it is exposed to repeatedly. A child’s mind is no exception to the case, excess exposure to violence in action packed cartoon with constant thrashing and fighting, a child’s mind becomes immune to it and does not respond the way it should when the child witnesses real life violence
Parents need to help their young ones to draw a line between reality and fiction. It is imperative that children are taught to distinguish between the two extremes. There are two other main issues with the growing popularity of cartoons. The first issue is that children many cartoon companies nowadays are targeting children to market their products. In the USA alone, over 2 billion dollars are spent each year on advertising targeted towards young consumers. The advertisement make you feel that if you do not own a certain product, you are nothing by a loser. If a child sees an item that they want and will throw a complete tantrum till their parents don’t give up and purchase it for them. This is a marketing company’s dream come true as companies view children through an economic lens. Nowadays, there is such a hype about these cartoons that everywhere around us one sees children with bags, clothes, figures, stationery, games and all sorts of things that are related to cartoons, and the ones who do not have them feel an inferiority complex.
The other issue and a rather serious one is that of the subliminal messages sent out by these cartoons. Barbie is a perfect example of this. It has become a major icon for young girls over the last several decades. Little do most people know, this pretty pink princess was based on a German prostitute comic strip character named Lili, who was later made into an 11 1/2 inch "sex pet" adult toy and sold exclusively in adult stores. In 1958, Mattel bought the rights to Lili and began the transformation from the adult toy to the Barbie doll that we know today.
Barbie sends the message that it is ideal to spend your time shopping and talking on the phone. When the first Teen Talk Barbie came out in 1992, the doll was pre-programmed to utter messages like "Math is tough." Barbie further pushes girls into gender roles and stereotypes by emphasizing pink as the feminine color, glamour and fame, and the "perfect" body. Girls begin to stereotype the ideal female as the pretty, blond, and slim model that Barbie presents us.
All this makes cartoons sound extremely evil, but if one gives it a thought, have we not all grown up watching these cartoons? Each one of us has watched cartoons while we were young, and some of us still do, but we are still perfectly normal human beings and have not developed any such physiological, psychological or behavioral changes. Thus, the impact of cartoons with all its legitimate reasoning and facts remains yet a very debatable topic.
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Can’t believe you have put it so well that even a newbie like me can understand it. Many many thanks.
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