For quite
some time many kids who have been referred for behavioral problems such as
aggressive behavior, bullying, taunting other kids were found to have one
common habit in them – Excessive watching of cartoon channels. This habit is
also seen commonly in children with poor communication skills, inability to
socialize, abnormal communication patterns such as use of jargons, rhythmic
vocalization even to communicate simple sentences etc. Most of the children
also show gradual deterioration in their academic performance and physical
health.
With
a number of channels on air Cartoon serials, have become inevitable part of
children’s life, more so in cities and families where both the parents are
employed. Many of today’s middle aged population grew watching Mickey Mouse,
Donald duck, Tom and jerry etc which were comedy centric, had very limited
vocal communication and more of pictorial version close to the original ones.
But the new shows that are telecast these days are more of deformed ones whether
its created on purpose or mismanage. These cartoons are dominant with features
of maladaptive behavior patterns such as deception, cheating, aggressive,
revengeful, ruthless and using unethical means to achieve success.
Parents
find gluing their child to any cartoon channel as the most convenient method of
handling their children’s behavior whenever they feel that they should not be
disturbed. Engaging their child with some cartoon channel give them freedom to
carry out; even many of the responsibilities related to their child such as
feeding. But the irony is that they never understand how it is going to negatively
affect the normal development of the child. They have also failed to
acknowledge the fact that normal development of a child is more dependent on the
exposure and experience, he or she is subjected to during their prime
developmental years and not on what is taught to them.
Children
have extremely impeccable minds due to which every external stimuli
specifically the ones that they are exposed to most of the time, have a major
role in shaping their personalities.
Cartoon viewing, thus, is a part of external stimuli in a child’s life in
which the child gets interested easily which goes to the levels of
preoccupation and sometimes addiction. Unsurprisingly the impact of cartoon on
the development and behavior of the child is directly proportional the amount
of time they are watching it.
The
negative impact of the watching cartoons goes unnoticed among the parents,
mostly because they never perceive it as harmful. It also happens because the
change in the behavior, habits and other functions of the children is gradual.
More over most of the negative behavior developed as a result of watching cartoons
is nor exhibited at home in its initial stages, since the child is engaged with
television most of the time while he or she is home. Most of the negative impact
of watching cartoons is manifested, outside the home when these children don’t
have the opportunity to be preoccupied with television. Many researches have shown that children who watch too much cartoons
on television are more likely to have mental and emotional problems, along with
problems in physical health and brain functions. Some of the significant
negative effects of watching cartoons beyond reasonable limits, on intellectual
functioning, emotionality and attitudes are as follows.
- Attention and concentration: Since most of the cartoons have fast moving frames the child finds it difficult to maintain attention as a result of which his skills of maintaining attention and concentration on his activities is affected. The child develops the habit of indulging in tasks which is of short duration and avoids tasks which requires attentiveness.
- Memory: Most of the cartoon series do not have a story line. It survives its popularity more on spontaneous actions and reactions of the characters. Since there is no organized story line which happens in systematic sequence and any content which needs to be learned the child just happen to enjoy it at a surface level without further processing to record the information in his short term or long term memory. Consistence watching of cartoons can gradually bring down the information processing ability of the child which can have an negative impact on storing and recalling informations
- Planning and organizing: Again the lack of organized story line and spontaneous acting and reacting features of cartoon series also never creates the feli need in the child to do things with appropriate planning and in an organized manner, instead most of his actions are spontaneous reactions to commands or external pressures
- Language Development: Most of the cartoons do not use proper vocabulary. When the children are consistently exposed to this, Instead of trying to talk, they will simply make sounds or gestures just as their favorite cartoon character. Even the children who talk use vocabulary with high tempo and jargons. Some of them also adopt the rhythm which their favorite cartoon uses which looks abnormal in real life.
- Aesthetic sense: Many of the cartoons series have characters which are disfigured and the children are impressed by them and enjoy them more for their aggressive spontaneous acts, but gradually the preoccupation with these characters affect the aesthetic sense, the ability to enjoy cleanliness and beauty of both people and nature
- Preoccupation with the fantasy world: The consistent and frequent exposure to cartoon world which is dominant with fantasies can lead to the child developing the habit of drifting into his own fantasy world whenever he is alone or disinterested in the activities or environment he is subjected to which affects his performance significantly
- Conflicts and confusion: since most of the cartoons depict the hero characters defying the social norms, discipline, achieving success through luck and support from the unexpected quarters, which is in contradiction to the norms which the parents, teachers and other well wishers insist on following, these children always tend get confused about the path they should take. This conflict between what they are exposed to in the virtual world and what they experience in the real world may a time always keeps them on the edge in relations to what they should do and what they should not, which also affects their decision making skills in the long run.
- Loss of self identity: the more a child watches a cartoons the more the possibility that he starts identifying himself with any character which may be good or bad. But in both the cases the child tries to imitate the actions and impersonate character because of which the tends to lose his self identity
- Lack of sympathy / empathy: Since most of the cartoons are dominant with aggression and violence too much of exposure to the same may make the child insensitive to any act of violence around them. They also don’t get affected by the suffering of others and never develop the tendency to understand the emotions of others. Either the watch it as silent observers or In some cases it even goes to the extent of, they enjoying the violence or suffering of others that they come across in their real life because they tend to believe that violence and suffering as funny and enjoyable ones.
- Devious thinking: many cartoon series are filled with contents of vengeful act, using unethical methods and cheating to win over their opponents, which can actually make children believe and involve using devious thinking and depraved acts as easy means of winning over their opponents
- Negative attitude: Most of the Cartoons are dominant with A character with negative attitude and manners that appears on the screen as a hero. They also contain content that would confuse the child with what he experiences in real life, it sometimes has contents which is contradictory to social norms, directions that contradicts with the parents approach, teachers outlook and views of the elders. An incoherent jumbled cartoon could confuse the child and lead a child to have a different undesirable negative point of view of his parents, his friends, teacher, well wishers and even god
The
negative impact of cartoon is not just restricted to intellectual
functioning, emotionality and attitude. It has a damaging impact on behavior
and socialization skills of the Child. The details of the same will be
discussed in the next article
