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Maria Balbuena

Writing 101 8:00 am

26 October 2021

Children's heroes can be Parents worst Nightmare

Cartoons are an unavoidable part of most children’s lives. Cartoon films have emerged due

to technological innovation and are important for the entertainment of children. These films have

both negative and positive consequences on children. It is common for these films to lead many

girls into admiring being queens and boys imagining themselves as fearless champions. These

feelings are common after watching common cartoon animations like Beauty and the Beast,

Cinderella, the Magic Lamp, Aladdin, Peter Pan. Cartoons can be found on television channels,

social media sites, and advertisement animations. Education cartoons have helped children learn

in fun and interactive ways. Moving objects, conversations in the films, pictures, and colorful

visuals present in some films make learning interesting for children. Additionally, they help in

developing logical reasoning and abilities, auditory and visual processing, and selective and

sustained attention of a child. It also enhances creative behaviors, language development,

relieves stress, and promotes jovial moods (Parvin and Shariful 25). Nevertheless, cartoon films

have been associated with some negative consequences for children. Such consequences include

violence, a sedentary lifestyle for children, antisocial behaviors, use of dirty language, lack of

empathy, and promoting unruly behaviors. Despite the advantages that can be reaped from

cartoons, violent cartoons have no benefits to children, and they lead to bad behaviors, addiction,

and health problems.

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Watching cartoons that have violence as a theme motivates children to become violent in

life. They tend to believe that no one is hurt after violent activities since cartoons escape without

injuries after undertaking violent incidents (Tahir et al., 690). They do not understand that their

physical bodies are prone to injury. Moreover, they have not experienced real violence in life and

do not understand the consequences of being violent. An example of such a cartoon is the

characters in Tom and Jerry, where characters engage in violent behavior but do not get hurt.

Characters often hit each other and cause each other to fall from heights, often without any real

consequences. The repercussion of such incidents is that children are misled into thinking violent

behavior has no consequences. Additionally, Bugs Bunny, Scooby-Doo, and Woody Woodpecker

teach children that violence is funny. They end up doing acts such as hitting people with frying

pans and rejoicing in it. These acts may make children fight in school and play violent games

amongst themselves. Cartoons with superhero characters increase these effects. These include

Spiderman, Batman, Superman, Power Rangers, X-men. Some of these cartoons depict

characters laughing after a character gets killed hence making children perceive death as a usual

joyous incident. Therefore, violent cartoons lead to violent nature in children.

Besides, children with exposure to violent scenes are less sensitive to the pains and

sufferings of other people. They are also not afraid of violent acts and are unbothered by violence

(Zhang et al., 490). When people are born, they have a capacity for motivation, experience, and

training. Children’s minds become easily influenced. Since the brain’s development is a dynamic

blend of nurture and nature, children are easily attracted to violent acts in school and at home.

Furthermore, increased interactions of children with electronic media limit their social

interactions hence altering the development of their brain social system. The effect of reduced
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social interaction is that children’s social lives are affected. Thus, violent cartoons predispose

children to violent behavior and affect their social life.

There are also cartoons that depict characters displaying disobedient and rude behaviors

towards their colleagues, elders, and teachers. Children follow these behaviors and act rude to

their teachers and parents when disciplined for the bad behaviors. At different ages, children

watch and understand cartoons differently, which impacts their behaviors. They establish cartoon

viewing patterns that will expose them to the different levels of cartoon violence and make them

lazy. They tend not to concentrate in their class, home chores and may do careless things,

especially when a cartoon film is playing. As a result, they easily disobey their elders, and they

become rude and violent when they are punished.

Violent cartoons are often not meant for young children meaning that they also contain

other inappropriate content. In several locations, the popular cartoon Tom and Jerry was banned

due to sequences in which the characters were seen smoking, drinking, and doing activities that

were not appropriate for children. A consequence of such inappropriate actions is that they

promote substance abuse among kids. In an episode titled “One Beer” from the Tiny Toon

adventures, cartoons are seen attempting to steal a beer bottle which makes young children learn

stealing and drug abuse. South Park is also known for its sarcastic humor, celebrity parodies, and

bad language. The language used in the cartoon is not suitable for children. Additionally, Dora

the explorer cartoon depicts Dora roaming around without parental supervision. She shows an

inappropriate amount of skin and teaches poor memorization skills. As a result, children may see

the importance of freedom through cartoons and rebel against their parents. Lastly, the Recess

cartoon animation shows characters consisting of principles, teachers, and six kids who portray
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stereotypical kids at school. One is the leader, and the rest are a wimp, a drama king, a nerd, a

jock, and a bully. This sounds like a great cast, but the stereotypical characters send out a

message implying that children need to define themselves by one of these characters.

Cartoons, especially violent ones, can include language that is not fit for children. Children

are vulnerable and may start using vulgar languages in their daily lives, which they learn from

cartoon animations (Sharma and Suri 5857). Violent cartoons often encourage antisocial

behaviors, which pass the wrong lessons to children. There are cartoons that promote offensive

behaviors, encourage aggressions and contain sexual allusions. These behaviors affect children’s

behavior and make them think that it is good to be violent, aggressive, and to engage in sexual

activities. Children also idolize their best cartoon characters and imitate them. Often, the object

of their admiration could be a misleading role model who encourages bad habits or displays

unruly behaviors towards fellow beings.

This effect of the cartoons on children’s psychology can often cause harmful consequences

and result in children being unruly, antisocial, uncommunicative, and withdrawn. Disney films

and cartoons that display sexism, racism, and xenophobia are criticized by people for their effect

on children’s behaviors. Additionally, people easily ignore the gender and race stereotypes

depicted in Disney cartoons. Cinderella and Snow White also have sexist undertones. The

heroine is always looking for a man to accompany her, and she feels unfulfilled without a man.

Children will always copy what they see, and that may be the major reason why gender and

racial inequality is still present today besides the violence. In the symbiotic Titans show on the

Cartoon Network channel, the girl dances in attractive ways to convince the man to do the

homework instead of her. She turns on a DVD and starts dancing for about a minute while
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focusing on her lower body. Other cartoons such as Digimon have random scenes that expose

male and female body sexual organs.

The Hercules show on Nickelodeon channel shows girls with thin bodies and dynamic

waists who move with every emotion captured (Habib and Soliman 257). This mobilization is

what captures the eyes of children hence affecting their behavior. The Pokémon show on Cartoon

Network exposes pictures of female characters showing their female organs all over the seasons

in comedic shapes. People believe that the Simpsons cartoon has topics such as sex and religion

that are too much for kids. The family guy also has topics of politics, race and, at times, sheds

light on religion negatively. They also have vulgar scenes, and the language is offensive. Too

many hours of sitting in front of screens watching cartoons can lead to adverse health problems

due to sedentary lifestyles and inactivity. These problems include nutritional deficiencies caused

by bad food habits, vision problems, and obesity.

Additionally, watching at an early age makes children enthusiastic viewers. Addiction to

television is a repercussion that emanates from exposure to violent cartoons at an early age.

Addiction to television is associated with several problems that affect children. An example is

that children who watch cartoons are more likely to suffer from emotional and mental problems

as well as develop eye and brain injuries. They are also at an unexpected risk of physical

problems after watching for long hours (Parvin and Shariful 29). One of the Pokémon episodes

was banned on televisions in Arab countries, Japan and Turkey, due to an explosion with intense

blue and red flashes at a frequency of 12Hz. Many children lose consciousness due to partial

vision loss. It is claimed that six hundred kids were taken to hospital, and the incident was named
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the Pokémon shock. Therefore, cartoons have an adverse effect on the minds of children due to

the bad behaviors, addiction, and health problems they develop.

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Works Cited

Habib, Khaled, and Tarek Soliman. "Cartoons’ effect in changing children's mental

response and behavior." Open Journal of Social Sciences 3.09 (2015): 248. doi:

10.4236/jss.2015.39033.

Mahmood, Tahir, Urwah Iftikhar, and Muhammad Ahsan Bhatti. "Impact of Violent

Cartoons on the Behaviour of Children: A Case Study of South Punjab." Journal of

Business and Social Review in Emerging Economies 6.2 (2020): 689-702.

doi:10.26710/jbsee.v6i2.1212.

Parvin, Forida, and Shariful Islam. "The Impact of Cartoon Programs ON Children's

Physical Health, Intelligence, Behavior and Activities." European Journal of

Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Studies 1.1 (2020).

Sharma, Aditya, and Chanchal Sachdeva Suri. "EFFECT OF CARTOON PROGRAMS ON

LANGUAGE AND BEHAVIOUR OF CHILDREN." PalArch's Journal of

Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology 17.6 (2020): 5853-5875.

file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/1863-Article%20Text-3673-1-10-20201206.pdf

Zhang, Qian, et al. "Effects of cartoon violence on aggressive thoughts and aggressive

behaviors." Aggressive behavior 45.5 (2019): 489-497.

https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21836