Impact of cartoon shows on children

Introduction
Watching cartoons has become one of the primary actions to many children these days. Too many children are watching too much cartoons and some of the materials can make them violent and addictive.Typically, children begin watching cartoons on television at an early age of six months, and by the age two or three children become enthusiastic viewers. Statistics indicate that children watch up to 30 hours of television each week, almost equivalent to the time spent in a full-time job. Among the TV shows, children have a special attraction to cartoons. Children watching too much cartoons on television are more likely to have mental and emotional problems, along with brain and eye injuries and unexpectedly the risk of a physical problem increases. Sometimes the material of the cartoons is not appropriate for their age group.Some cartoons representviolent actions involving animated characters and situations. High level of violence in cartoons can make children more aggressive. It is because children tend to mimic the negative behavior they see on cartoons. 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. Besides, some cartoons are also displaying false sense of reality upon children. Along with the behavioral effects, watching cartoons for long time also leave some physiological symptoms. As for the brain, there is scientific evidence that too much television can be detrimental to children. The April 2004 issue of the medical journal Pediatrics published a study done by Childrens Hospital and Regional Medical Center of Seattle, Washington. The study revealed that children who watched three to
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four hours of television daily had a 30 to 40 percent greater risk of developing attention deficit disorder than children who did not watch television. While no specific program is directly responsible, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, leader of the study, speculates that the speed of the images displayed could affect childrens brains (Todays Chiropractic, 2004). The other problem is that the eyes get bad. Adams, Cecil (1992, July 24) claimed that watching television is not a danger to the eyes, as long as children watch in the right conditions. Most people think that just watching cartoons on television is very dangerous to the eyes, but if the room is quite bright and children sit far from the television, it will not damage their eyes, but rather will result in eye fatigue. Fantasy is the main content of cartoons and in fact, 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 juvenile minds of kids. Violence is not funny and it is not harmless so the children needs help to develop a sense of consequence of those acts which they saw the cartoon characters doing.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Background
Children enjoy watching cartoons. Nevertheless, most parents do not let their children watch cartoons too much because they get worried about the effects of cartoons on their children. First of all, if their children watch cartoons too much, the childrens eyes would get worse, and they may also lose their attention span. Secondly, parents are worried about mental and emotional problems with their children, which could come from watching violent cartoons. The last problem is that children most often imitate what they see on television. These three reasons are why every parent should control their children with watching cartoons too much on TV. A cartoon is several forms of art, with varied meanings that evolved from one to another. Cartoon is a main source of entertainment for children. Children keenly observe what cartoons' actions. Round the clock cartoons are on air on Cartoon Network. Because of this channel, we can see barren playgrounds, children's sloppy attitude towards studies. They have no time for the healthy activities. Children watch cartoons for entertainment. They prefer those cartoons which are understandable in terms of language. Cartoons have existed on broadcast television for about seven decades. Many of the cartoon characters that children are most familiar with are Bugs Bunny, Ben 10, Tom and jerry, He-man, Captain planet, Daffy Duck, and Popeye.From the last five to six years Dragon ball z, Pokemon, Naruto, Thundercats, Final fantasy etc has become much popular and attractive among children. These cartoons contain more violent content than the cartoons of earlier decades. According to Butler, Jeremy (2010), scenes in cartoons that were considered appropriate for a general audience in the 1940s are not
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thought to be too brutal for todays educated children. There is no uncertainty that cartoon violence affects children in some way. Animated shows aimed at youngsters often have more brutality than programmes broadcast for general audiences. Children copied and identified with fantasy characters just as much as they would with screen actors. The U.S. psychologists quizzed 95 girls aged ten and 11 about their favorite TV shows, rating them for violent content and verbal and indirect aggression. found that output aimed at children as young as seven, which included a number of cartoons had the highest levels of violence. (Clark, Laura. Cartoon violence makes children more aggressive). So we need to consider the ways in which children process information, the amount of mental effort they invest, and their own life experience to gain an understanding of how television violence affects children. 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. Although violence presented as real appears to promote aggression more in adults than violence described as fictional, fictional violence also seems to make aggression more likely than programming without violent content (Atkin, 1983). 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.
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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Today in many childrens cartoons we see cartoon characters jumping, diving, and falling from very high heights, then landing without being harmed. Parents seem to be happy with this as long as the cartoon doesnt promote adult or any kind of violent content. Some cartoons like Bugs Bunny show that they shoot each other. But, are these types of cartoonreally ok for your children to watch? These sorts of cartoons are displaying false sense of reality upon children. Being able to fall off a tall cliff or being shot with a gun in the face and walking from these incidents with barely a scratch. At a young age, this false sense of reality can really affect them. Josephson, Wendy (2010), observed that elementary school age (ages six to eleven) is considered a critical period for understanding the effects of television on aggression. At this stage, children develop the attention span and cognitive ability to follow continuous plots, to make inferences about implicit content, and to recognize motivations and consequences to characters' actions.However, they are also investing increasingly less mental effort overall in their viewing and it is mental effort that determines whether children will process television information deeply or merely react to it in an unfocused, superficial way. Todays children tend to spend less time on physical activities and study. This is because they often spend too much time on watching cartoons. In Japan, the availability of TV accompanied a decline in both time spend on homework and reading skills (Furu, 1962). This avoidance of physical activities can increase the rate of obesity among the children. Besides, it also has lessened the practice of their intellectual ability. Parents

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should be concerned about how many hours their children are spending on watching cartoons.

Research Questions
In the research paper I have tried to find out the impacts of watching cartoons based on observing the children. My research addressed the following questions: What kind of cartoon character did you like? How many hours you used to spend every day on watching cartoon? Do you still spend that much time for watching cartoons? Have you ever wanted to be cartoon character you used to like? Did you like the cartoons that contained fighting or violent material? Do you think those cartoon shows have ever made you think to do something violent? Did you have headache or stress for watching cartoons for long time?

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Hypothesis
Cartoon shows have great impact on a childs mind. It can create temporary physical and mental problems. Children, watching television for a long time, often have headache and eye ache. Besides the cartoons those are being showed in television today, contains more violent material. Sometimes children spend too much time in watching cartoon than any other activity. That can harm their study and lessen intellectual capability.

Methodology
This study was planned to identify the impact of cartoons on children. The primary research is based on the negative impacts of cartoons on the childhood of some undergraduate students. I have chosen students and parents to conduct the primary research. The purpose was to collect their experience and prove how badly cartoons can harm the children based on their response to my questions.I have provided a questioner based on my assumptions to get their responses against my assumptions. I have also read out few online articles and journal to do my secondary research. I have found some articles on the impacts on cartoons done by physiologists who tried to identify the behavioral impacts on the children. Most of the articles refers that cartoons are containing more violent contents these days. For which children may suffer from behavioral aggression.

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Data presentation and analysis

Favourite Activity
12% 14% 31% 43% T.V

Games
Studying Others

It can be inferred from the pie chart that 43 % of all children preferred watching T.V. The second popular activity was playing video games, while the figures for studying and other activities were 14 % and 12% respectively. Most of the children answered that they watch cartoon occasionally , while a few did admit that they were addicted to watching cartoons. The number of children who never watched cartoon was rather insignificant Children watching cartoons differentiated themselves from those playing outdoor sports by saying that they were physically less fit and less interactive. Those who go out to play generally mix with other children of the same age and share emotions and ideas, which help them to think more clearly and improve their interaction skills. On the other hand, those children who are engaged in watching
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cartoons all day long staying at home does not get the scope to talk, interact or share ideas. Therefore, they tend to be introverts and suffer from behavioural disorder symptoms. Many children would like to go out to play, but factors such as excessive home works, scarcity of play grounds and no permission from their parents act as constraints.

Hours spent on watching cartoon

14 12 10 8 6

12 10 6

12

4 2 0 2 Hours 4 Hours More thatn 6 hours Do not remember

Children are watching too mutch cartoon these days. They used to sped a large portion of a day to watch cartoon. Most of the children used to spend at least four hours on watching cartoons. Besides the graph shows that twelve among the fourty(30 percent)children used to spend more than six hours. This is ofcourse an alarming rate of spending time on watching cartoons. It may have lead them to do less physical works. There are also 12 children whose parents do not remember how much time their children spent on watching cartoons. They may have spent too much to remember or

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not so much fond of cartoons. The response is higher of spendig four or more hours on watching cartoons.

Favorite types of cartoon character

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Fighter Super Hero Funny No Specific Type

14 10 6 10

Among the fourty respondents, we see that fourteen children(35 percent) watch super hero character. They might have a false sense of reality that they can do anything without getting any harm. There are ten respondents(25percent) who liked fighter character. Both super hero and fighter character can create false sense of reality at their early age. A very little response found on the funny characters. There are ten respondents who were not fond of any specific type of characters. We can see that more than half of the responses were on fighter and super hero characters which might have lead them being violent.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Favorite cartoon show

7.50%

Captain Planet

45%

32.50%

Tom & Jerry Ben 10 Doraemon

15%

Among the cartoon shows fourty five percent respondents watch Doraemon and 33 percent watch tom & jerry which is a funny cartoon show and another twenty two percent children watch captain planet and Ben 10. Here we can see that more than half of the respondents used to watch funny cartoons. But in the previous graph, we saw that almost half of the respondents used to like super hero and fighter character. Here fighter character Capten planet has 7percent respondentss. Ben 10, a super hero type cartoon has only fifteen percent respondent.Tom and jerry cartoon often show that they are jumping from higher places and throwing stuffs to each other. This can be harmful for children if they try to follow those cartoons.

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Physical problem due to watching cartoon for a long time

16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Headache Eye ache Stress Migraine None of the above

15 12 8

The graph shows that among fourty children, eight of them have not face any kind of physical problems for watching cartoons for long time. But twelve of them said that they face some eye problem. A very few children face stress or migraine type problem. It represents that watching cartoon for long do have a very little impact on children.Among the impacts eye ache is the more common problem faced by the respondents.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Opinion about watching cartoon

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Waste of time Can create false sense of reality Can make violent can make creative

18 10 4 4

2
No impact

From the above graph we can see that four parents think that cartoons can make children crteative. Eighteen of them think that cartoons can creat false sense of reality. The cartoons children are watching today often shows activities which are just meant to be funny rather having sense of reality. This shows can be harmful for children. Ten of them thinks that watching cartoons can make children violent. Four among fourty parents think that watching cartoon is waste of time. More two reffers to no impact of watching cartoons.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

cartoon that children are watching today

12% 34% more craetive Not appropiate for a child nd violent 54% No opinion

. Among the parents fifty four percent of them voted that their children are watching violent cartoons nowadays which is not appropriate for a child. Thirty four percent of them thinks that watching cartoon make their children creative.12% had no opinion. As the children were asked why they preferred violent cartoons other than non violent ones, they answered games like Dragon Ball Z , G.I JOE , Max Payne, etc provided them with entertainment and excitement, which were missing to a great extent in the other type of cartoons mentioned.

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Impacts on Education

37% 63%
Yes, He cannot Concentrate on study No, Cartoon Doesn't affect my children education

Above graph shows percentage of the impacts of cartoon on education of the children. Here we can see sixty threee percent respondent said that cartoons have negetive impacts on children and they cannot concentrate on studies due to the cartoon. They want to watch cartoon all the time. But another thirty seven percent people said that their children dont face any educational problem due to watching cartoon. Here maximum proporton of people supported the negetive impacts of cartoon on children education.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Secondary data presentation and analysis

A cartoon is several forms of art, with varied meanings that evolved from one to another. Cartoon is a main source of entertainment for children. From the last five to six years Dragon ball z, Pokemon, Naruto, Thundercats, Doraemon, Final fantasy etc has become much popular and attractive among children. These cartoons contain more violent content than the cartoons of earlier decades. According to Butler, Jeremy (2010), scenes in cartoons that were considered appropriate for a general audience in the 1940s are not thought to be too brutal for todays educated children. There is no uncertainty that cartoon violence affects children in some way. Cartoons are making children violent but it depends on the content of the cartoon. If the contents are violent the children will be violent. 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. Although violence presented as real appears to promote aggression more in adults than violence described as fictional, fictional violence also seems to make aggression more likely than programming without violent content (Atkin, 1983).

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Today children are concentrating more on watching cartoon and they spend a huge time of the day to watch cartoon and as a result they are not emphasizing on physical activities. Todays children tend to spend less time on physical activities and study. This is because they often spend too much time on watching cartoons. In Japan, the availability of TV accompanied a decline in both time spend on homework and reading skills (Furu, 1962). This avoidance of physical activities can increase the rate of obesity among the children. Besides, it also has lessened the practice of their intellectual ability. Parents should be concerned about how many hours their children are spending on watching cartoons.

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Impact of cartoon shows on children

Research findings
Watching cartoons is one of the most primary activity of many children. It is a matter of concern how many hours do they spend for cartoons and contents are being displayed. Today cartoon shows exposes much more viloent contents before children. But nevertheless it does not seem that the behavior of children can be driven much by the content. From the primary research we saw that most the student who used to like violent contents in the cartoons also used to agressive at the same time. It appears that the content of the cartoons do have negative impact on the behavior of the children. Physiological symptoms like headache, eye, migrane are caused for watching cartoons for long time. Most of the respondents who used to watch cartoons for long time have faced impact for that.From the secondary research I found that children tends to avoid physical activities who watches cartoon for long time. Cartoons are often responsible for creating false sense of reality to the children. Almost every cartoons do not have any relation to the real world from which children can actually learn something. Considering the contents of the cartoons of the recent years, most respondents think to leave a restriction of time leangth and content. At the same time cartoon can affect the education of children.

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Recommendation
Cartoon shows should provide educative material including consequence to the reality. Parents can limit the amount of time children spend watchingtelevision, and encourage children to spend their time on sports.

Limitations
The major limitations of conducting this research are the time and the sample size. This type of research needs more time and large sample size to correctly get the findings of the research. The time limitations may result in poor findings. Sample size of the research is only 40 people, which may not truly reflect the thinking of the whole population. I have found some respondents were not spontaneous and they give wrong answers and comments, which resulted in taking five surveys again. The answer given by the respondents may not be their actual thinking or views. The interviewees answers may be biased so that the results go in favor of them. Finally, there may be some errors from my side, which is termed as the researcher biasness.

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Conclusion
In the end I would like to conclude that by the research I didnt mean that cartoons are not good for children. All I emphasize is that the kids should be provided with quality entertainment, entertainment is laughter but violence is not the way of doing it. It is certainly true that cartoon violence does not account for all the causes of children's aggression, and it is also true that some children are a great deal more likely to be affected by television violence than others, and that it is these children who are likely to be potentially more aggressive anyway. But the effect of cartoon violence leads these "at-risk" children to be even more aggressive than they would otherwise be. And although the group especially at risk might be a minority of viewers, they are likely to be the majority of aggressors. This fact makes them, and the violent content of cartoons, worthy of our attention. Parents should think about how to prevent their children from the bad effects of cartoons.

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References
Adams, Cecil (1992, July 24). Will sitting too close to the TV, reading with bad light, etc., ruin your eyes? The Straight Dope. Retrieved November 3, 2004, from http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_105.html Atkin, (1983).Effects of Aggressive and Pro-social Film Material on Altruistic Behavior of children.Psychological Reports,48:699702.http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1981.48.3.699 Butler, Jeremy (2010). Cartoons. Retrieved March 23, 2010, fromhttp://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=cartoons

Clark, L. (2009). Cartoon violence makes children more aggressive.Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1159766/Cartoon-violence-makeschildren-aggressive.html

Cohen, K.F. (2004).Forbidden animation: censored cartoons and blacklisted animators in america. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.

Furu, T. (1962).Television and Childrens Life: A Before-after Study. Nippon Hoso Kyokai:JapanBroadcasting corporation. Josephson, Wendy (2010). Television Violence: A Review of the Effects on Children of Different Ages. Retrieved March 24, 2010, fromhttp://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/research_documents/r eports/violence/tv_violence_child.cfm Shah, A. (2003, October 28). Behind Consumptions and Consumers. Retrievedfrom http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Childr en.asp

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Appendix

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