INTRODUCTION:

Blockbuster favorites yield millions of dollars each year, and advertisers pay thousands to network television stations for seconds of airspace strategically placed throughout popular television shows. From drama to comedy, soap operas to sitcoms, television seems to offer something for everyone-including our kids. Statistics indicate that children watch up to 30 hours of television each week, almost equivalent to the time spent in a full-time job. For younger viewers, one type of program seems to have a special attraction i.e. cartoons.

Cartoons have some negative and positive impacts on the children as their minds are innocent and at a stage of learning. Children of different ages watch and understand television in different ways, depending on the length of their attention spans, the ways in which they process information, the amount of mental effort they invest, and their own life experiences. The affects of violence on children of different ages is different.

"Do these cartoons affect children?"

Some say these programs are harmless entertainment that can increase a child’s imaginative faculties; others are concerned that these cartoons may be too violent for children, or encourage the wrong kind of behavior. Unfortunately, the answer is yes some cartoons are affecting children.

NEGATIVE AFFECTS:

Cartoons are some of the most violent programs on TV. Cartoon violence can be particularly harmful because it trivializes the violence, often making it funny.

One problem with cartoons is that they do not challenge children's minds. When a child watches television, the screen is doing all of the thinking for him, leaving nothing up to the child's imagination. As a result of this lack of stimulation, only minimal brain activity occurs, thus depriving the child's mind of growth and development. When one considers mental development, cartoons are essentially useless.

A second and more serious problem with cartoons is that they often hinder proper moral development. Unfortunately, too often cartoons display improper behavior, morals, and actions. Many times, the characters in cartoons may yell at each other, telling the other person to "Shut up!" Other times, the cartoon may show hatred and violence, with fighting occurring between the characters. Just as seriously, the characters in cartoons are frequently disrespectful towards parents and other authority figures as well. Clearly, these programs are not promoting or reinforcing the values that most parents teach their children.

For example: in the cartoon TOM & JERRY,

“Tom took off after Jerry trying to snip off his head with a scissor. Jerry then turned the scissors on Tom cutting his tale into a row of paper dolls. Then the chasing went outside. Tom flattened Jerry with a shovel. Jerry found a lead pipe and beat Tom in the shins. In the next scene, Tom was chasing Jerry with lawn mower.”

It’s amusing, but it teaches children that violence is not serious. It also teaches them that violence does not have serious, genuine consequences.

WHAT DOES RESEARCH SHOW?

Psychological research has shown three major effects of seeing violence on television:

Children may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others Children may be more fearful of the world around them

Children may be more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others.

One example: in several studies, those who watched a violent program instead of a nonviolent one were slower to intervene or to call for help when, a little later, they saw younger children fighting or playing destructively.

Studies by George Gerbner, Ph.D., at the University of Pennsylvania, have shown that children's TV shows contain about 20 violent acts each hour and also that children who watch a lot of television are more likely to think that the world is a mean and dangerous place.

Aletha Huston, Ph.D., said;

“The children who watched the violent cartoons, were more likely to hit their playmates, argue, disobey class rules, leave tasks unfinished, and were less willing to wait for things than those children who watched nonviolent programs.”

Real-Life Studies:

Findings from the laboratory are further supported by field studies which have shown the long-range effects of televised violence. Leonard Eron, Ph.D., and his associates at the University of Illinois, found that children who watched many hours of TV violence when they were in elementary school tended to also show a higher level of aggressive behavior when they became teenagers. By observing these youngsters until they were 30 years old, Dr. Eron found that the ones who'd watched a lot of TV when they were eight years old were more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for criminal acts as adults.

SOME COMMENTS:

Watching scientific fantasy cartoons Fatima Yahya, 11 says:

“I love these cartoons because I learn some things related to adults, I feel that my mind develops and I think that I can make a lot of small scientific things.” 

Kholoud al-Mansour, 18, a high school graduate:

“Adults can distinguish between reality and fantasy, so such

cartoons cannot affect them badly. But I think that small

children are terribly affected by such things. They react to the

characters in these cartoons and try to imitate them. I love

watching some scientific fantasy cartoons, such as Yugi-oh and

Pokémon, but I am not affected by these cartoons like my

younger brother and sisters are.”

Haley Feuerbacher said:

“My friend's son's cartoons are teaching him how to use

harmless basketballs as mighty death missiles to eliminate evil

Zorab, otherwise known as his little sister. I watched as the

older boy, a sweet-tempered, really loving child, got up and

whacked his sister with a laser sword. The little three-year-old

of course started screaming that her brother had hit her, and

when I asked him why on earth he did such a thing, he stared

blankly at me, and replied, "I don't know." Should I blame the

violent cartoons he had been watching for him acting out his

role as a Power Ranger?”

VIOLENT CARTOONS:

There are many cartoons broadcasted on T.V. which can be harmful for children due to the violent content. Cartoon violence in various degrees has been around since Mortimer Mouse (Mickey Mouse) in Steam Boat Willie, Popeye, 3 Stooges, Superman, Looney Tunes, Scooby Doo, Tom, and Jerry, Justice League and so on. Now the modern scientific fantasy cartoons can make children more aggressive like Pokemon, Ben-10, and Star wars etc.

Cartoons aim for children show more brutality than any other program shown on T.V. for general viewer ship. Cartoons often show the characters smoking which can create an adverse affect on the small innocent mind watching.

For example in two episodes of children favorite Tom & Jerry namely Texas Tom and Tennis Chumps:

“In the first Tom is shown trying to impress a female cat by rolling a cigarette, lighting it and smoking it with one hand. In the second, Tom's tennis opponent is seen smoking a large cigar.”

Tom and Jerry smoking usually appears in a stylish manner that can be yet more attractive for the children to imitate.

In some other cartoons also we can find the characters smoking.

In the Looney Tunes cartoons we can find a high level of violent behavior as the characters are using guns, dynamites, canons, rifles and various destructive weapons in an amusing manner. The only thing an immature brain can extract from these types of cartoons is aggression, cruelty, brutality and spitefulness is good and enjoyable.

Super man and Justice League cartoons are also affecting the juvenile minds of children. How? The concept of a human being flying all over the city and helping the others seems so fascinating to these young brains and some real incidents have been recorded in the past where the innocent kids lost their lives in trying to fly like our super heroes and jumped from balcony wrapped in a red veil around the neck. These types of cartoons include Superman, Spiderman and all the members of Justice League.

The Japanese based internationally famous cartoon Pokemon, abbreviation of Pocket Monster can make children more aggressive, and research has found that the violent scenes in cartoons like Pokemon can be damaging for these unripe mind. They also fosund that children identify as much with cartoon characters as real actors, and that many animated shows contain more violence than television aimed at adolescents. The monsters fighting with their powers and weapons like swords take the children to a fantasy world where violence or hiting any other human being is not harmful.

Christine Cannon, a teacher says:

“I have the opportunity to observe children’s conduct and to discover what influences their actions. I was amazed to find that almost 90% of the time they misbehave; they are imitating something they saw on TV. In one instance, two young boys in my class were fighting; they were punching, calling each other stupid, and yelling at each other to shut up. After separating them, I asked each boy where he had learned to act the way he did. They both gave me the same response: They saw it on TV.”

Here, I would like to clear that I am not criticizing fantasy cartoons, without fantasy cartoons are incomplete. Basically I am against or telling the negative aspect of such cartoons that are conveying wrong kind of attitude, violent scenes that are only giving the message that violence is funny and scientific fantasy cartoons that leads to develop wrong scientific concepts among children.

WHAT PARENTS CAN DO?

While most scientists are convinced that children can learn aggressive behavior from television, they also point out that parents have tremendous power to moderate that influence.

Because there is a great deal of violence in both adult and children's programming, just limiting the number of hours children watch television will probably reduce the amount of aggression they see.

Parents should watch at least one episode of the programs their children watch. That way they'll know what their children are watching and be able to talk about it with them.

Parents can outright ban any programs that they find too offensive. They can also restrict their children's viewing to shows that they feel are more beneficial, such as documentaries, educational shows and so on.

Parents can limit the amount of time children spend watching television, and encourage children to spend their time on sports, hobbies, or with friends; parents and kids can even draw up a list of other enjoyable activities to do instead of watching TV.

Parents can encourage their children to watch programs that demonstrate helping, caring and cooperation. Studies show that these types of programs can influence children to become more kind and considerate.

Children should also be encouraged to read, which has far more mental and educational and emotional benefits than sitting in front of a television.

CONCLUSION:

In the end I would like to conclude that by the research I didn’t mean that cartoons are not good for children. All I emphisize is that the kids should be provided with quality entertainment, entertainment is laughter but violence is not the way of doing it. Watching the cartoons which are showing a high level of violence, destructive weapons, characters fighting and bruitly beating eachother and smoking, scientific fantsy creations and creatures, monsters with super powers and etc. do you think the innocent, immature kids watching them will not have any negative aspect on their behavior or attitude towards their surounding? Or they will not immitate what they see?

Here, again I would like to mention that I am not against cartoons or fantasy based cartoons, fantasy is the main content of cartoons and infact every human being has his or her own secret fantasy world. So, fantasies are only harmful when they are giving a wrong message, especially to the juvinile minds of kids. Voilence is not fuuny and it is not harmless so the children needs help to develop a sence of consequens of those acts which they saw the cartoon characters doing. Definitely, if you drop an anvil on a cat's head like in the cartoons that cat in real life will not get up again. Or fighting the imaginary monsters or evil robots, other wise known as human beings with toys which may include plastic swords, guns, and basket balls as deadly missile etc. has their consequences.

Parents can do a fine job by keeping a check on their kids while watching T.V and using internet. Watching cartoons is not bad although it’s a complete entertainment for children but the hours of watching cartoons and T.V. must be limited and decided by the parents and they can provide their kids with different interesting useful activities than only watching cartoons on T.V. Parents must encourage

children to watch different programs which can be more educational, they can also encourage them to read books.

REFERENCES:

www.sott.net http://images.google.com.pk

cartoons-comics.deepthi.com

www.ask.com

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/340059/ the_pokemon_syndrome_are_todays_cartoons.html

www.wikipedia.com

cartoons-comics.deepthi.com