Well i am doing post graduation and the blog title will question the relevance of the article. Cartoons sound rather frivolous at this age and stage of life. As percipient lets consider what the toddlers are watching now a days. In India popular cartoon channels are Cartoon Network, Pogo, Hungama, Nick, Disney channel and Jetix. Cartoon Network is still the leading channel with close competition from Pogo. Nick and Hungama are close competitors for the third position. The time slots given to various cartoon programmes is dominated by Disney series or many new Chinese and Japanese cartoons. If we examine closely a lot of these cartoons depict violence.
Toddlers watching violence at such tender age deters my notion that "cartoons are good for children". Cartoons like Flash blade, Flash Gordon, Ninja Turtles has great impact on the kids. I have personally witnessed how kids are willing to throw unacceptable tantrums to get the Ninja Swords or small weapons used by some famous cartoon characters.
The various facets that should be taken into account are Mental and psychological effects, Subliminal Messages, increased risk to children's safety and the marketing strategies of various companies that exploit the popularity of cartoons. 
Psychologist suggest that children watching television more than 4 hours develop a retarded development of social interaction. A child develops personality which is influenced by parental nurturing as well as environment. It is essential to provide a healthy and serene surrounding.Subliminal Messaging as defined by the Oxford dictionary as"Below the threshold of conscious perception, inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response."These messages might adversely affect the behaviour of children when they are adult.The various accident cases which happen as children try to imitate the charaters is of grave concern.The various marketing strategies especially cartoon merchandise are a huge source of revenue.This is evident from the existing plethora of Harry Potter merchandise. The companies use various cartoons to promote their products. Children are infactuated and tend to buy these products and sometimes want to possess those products as status symbols. Its on us to decide now where to draw the line...
We ought to use discretion while kids watch various cartoons and efforts should be taken to modify unnecessary violence or subliminal messages in the cartoons.Every coin has two sides.A flip side to cartoons!!!
3 comments:
well.. i completely agree with u. the kind of cartoons telecasted these days are based on violence. young kids become so aggressive watching it. its no more .. duck tales and tales spin.
cartoons are for all. the essence of it is to make us laugh n relax our mind. its for fun and to have a good time watching it. animation is my all time fav. yet.. i dont enjoy these japanese cartoons. given a choice.. 'shin chan' would be my pick. its nice.. watch it!!
December 16, 2008 8:20 AM
You r right. U wrote about marketing and other aspects, but i would like to tell u that companies find market if demand is there or create demand if it is absent. one more thing if u look at Indian epics then u will find they r also violent in nature, so what children should watch and not that cant b defined.
It might sound crazy but i think Cartoons can b the media to implement sex education for children in India. Why government is not paying its attention in this matter, because it is seriously confused about the medium to implement that education among children.
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