Negative effects of cartoons

Parents should limit the amount and the content of cartoons their children watch. Cartoons have a lot of negative impact on children because kids are very influential in a young age, watching cartoons that have violent and ill mannered content in it lets the children get exposed to such things at an age where they cannot yet distinguish right from wrong and reality from fake. Cartoons are negatively influential because they have too much violence, they make kids inactive and ultimately over weight, they set up a mind set for the child's behavior and how they should act.

Cartoons can be used for good things too, such as education for preschoolers or they can help infants and babies get linguistic exposure and start talking early. Cartoons can also be used as entertainment to keep kids out of trouble or occupied while their parents are busy doing something. Although cartoons can be used in a positive way like education for kids, most cartoons are not for educational purposes and most parents do not realize that the cartoons their children watch are harmful to their child's health, mentally and physically.

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Cartoons today are mostly about entertainment, and violence is the biggest factor in it. Children who watch violence depicted on TV are more likely to imitate those acts since in cartoons they do not show the after math of violence, so kids do not really know the consequences of violence and they do not know why it’s a bad thing. Violence is depicted as a cool or fun thing and an effective way to get what you want.

Kidshealth say that "Kids who view violent acts are more likely to show aggressive behavior but also fear that the world is scary and that something bad will happen to them".

(Kidshealth.org) and other experts say that "Today's animation and games are so realistic it can be hard for kids to tell the difference between ‘pretend' violence and live action, making some animation just as disturbing as the real thing" (schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au). Cartoons like family guy where content like violence, aggression, sexual immaturity and bad language is depicted in every episode and is a available for kids from all age groups like elementary kids to high school students. Family guy is an American adult animated sitcom created by Seth MacFarlane, its format is black comedy and surreal humor.

In this cartoon the main character is Peter Griffin who is a middle aged man. Peter Griffins main activities are going to the bar to hang out with his friends and drinking, he is very immature and irresponsible in the way he acts and the things he does. In many episodes of the cartoon Peter Griffin ends up fighting with a rooster named Ernie, and they fight for like five minutes nonstop, destroing everything in their path.

The family of Peter Griffin always fight and argue and that promotes domestic violence, especially to kids who do not know any better. All the characters in the cartoon are terrible role models, and almost every character does something terrible whether it is killing, drug use, drinking, perversity and more. This cartoon and others like it are available for children who watch TV without the supervision of their parents.

Obesity is becoming a growing problem for kids because they are watching cartoons that advertise unhealthy eating and they spend too much time being inactive in front of the TV. A child who watches cartoons frequently probably has a favorite character that he or she likes, now the danger comes in when that child's favorite cartoon character starts doing risky things that are ultimately or immediately harmful to them. If a cartoon character starts eating unhealthy, the child who admires that character will want to eat whatever they saw the cartoon character eat, and the children will even beg and cry to their parents to get the food product that has their favorite characters picture on it.

Whether the food product is healthy or not their parents will end up buying it just to make their kids stop crying. Research shows that "children who consistently spend more than 4 hours per day watching TV are more likely to be overweight" (kidshealth.org). If there is an activity children might be doing that makes them active and on TV they have their favorite cartoon show on they will choose that cartoon show over playing and being active because the cartoons are designed to be entertaining and addictive to children. Most often children watch cartoons with a snack nearby and end up over eating and ultimately gain weight over a period of their childhood lives.

Cartoons are an effective way to teach children school subjects through fun and humor to keep children interested and motivated to learn. Children tend to learn better and faster when they are shown or thought any subject by someone they like and if it is presented to them appropriately. Cartoons are attractive to children because they are made specifically for kids. Cartoons like Curios George, teach kids how to be adventures, generous, curious, to persevere and how to be friendly. Curious George also sets a good example for children to follow , like when George feeds the birds on his roof and when he helps out with groceries and how he is always considerate of others.

Because of how attractive cartoons are to children, parents really need to be careful about what they let their children watch because cartoons could leave a big influence on them in a negative way. Yes there are some good affects of cartoons, however it still comes down to the need of the parents to monitor what their kids watch because after all, it is the parents responsibility to teach their kids how to have good morals and character and not some cartoon show that happens keep their children smiling or keep them busy while the parents do something else.

Parents must not be tricked into thinking that because a story is presented in cartoon format it has a lesser impact on children. cartoons are harmful to children because they are too influential to kids and most cartoons today are violent and they send ill messages to kids like for example, that they need to be aggressive to get what they want or that they can be violent and get away with it without consequences. Cartoons that have violence almost never show the consequences of violence and that's how children end up thinking that it's not a bad thing and that way they eventually get desensitized to it.

Cartoons can make children over weight because they are inactive for hours at a time and they are allowed to do this daily without the supervision of their parents. Cartoons can be used for good also like, they can teach children about nature and animals and they can learn about school subjects. Cartoons like "Dora The Explorer" where they teach kids new things about nature and they teach kids Spanish and how to be adventures.

Cartoons can be used for good but that does not make them less harmful because they are still highly influential to kids because of how much impact they can have on a child's view of how they should behave. It comes down to the need of the parents to monitor the content of the cartoons they let their children watch and how involved they want to be in their child's life and how they want their kids to grow up.

Work Cited
http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/tv_affects_child.html#. Steven Dowshen, MD. October 2011. August 10, 2013. http://www.schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au/technology/using-technology/does-cartoon-violence-make-kids-more-aggressive. August 10, 2013.