Visit My Friends' Blogs

Dear followers,

I would like to encourage you to visit my friend's blog. I have chosen five most interesting that can give you valuable view on different topics than violence in cartoons. 

The first one is by Nini Zalkaliani, she is focusing on negative impact of the movie industry on the youth. 

http://ninozalkaliani.blogspot.cz/
I especially recommend 'Educational Article Part 1' - it is dealing with very similar problem as my blog, so it was very interesting for me to see another perspective on this topic.

The second one is by Jordan Julian - she focus on the effects that media and technology has on us,and for example focus on social media such as Facebook.
http://mediaandtechnologyeffects.wordpress.com/

This blog was according to me the most interesting to read, because Jordan focus on something that is touching all of us.

The third one is by Maryam Rasouli and deals with technology and its used for educational purposes. And as Jordan's blog we all can assosiate somehow with this topic. So, it was easy to follow Maryam's posts and get better perspective on this topic.
http://technology-vs-education.blogspot.cz/

Moreover, I also look at Valeria Dimova's blog that deals with the fact that reading is not that popular as was 30 years ago.
http://valeriadimova29.blogspot.cz/2013/05/expanding-horizons.html

Btw. after reading this blog, you will want to read a book again. Valeria persuaded  me to read Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov.

Last, but not least, I would like to recommend a blog by Nada Chrenkova - her blog focus on media and its influence on children weight problems. And as a sister, I am generally interested in topic that deals with children and media, because I still have huge gaps of knowledge that I need to gain about effects of media on children.
I especially recommend her essay that is describing the problem of media in more complex way.
http://mediaweightproblems.blogspot.cz/2013/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-ja-x.html

Thank you very much and see you in my next post:-).
Michaela. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics And Their Facts

The topic of violent cartoons is significantly popular among academic journal articles, or research papers. For example The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published at their website a summary why TV violence matters, and what should parents do in order to protect their children.

            According to AAP, by watching 3 to 4 hours of non-educational TV per day, children will have seen about 8,000 murders on TV by the time they finish elementary school. They

also recommend to parents to limit the TV use of their children on 1 or maximum 2 hours per day.

            Another issue that this short article is looking at is that in such cartoons videos, characters are usually solving their problems with violence; thus, child can easily learn to solve its problem with violence also.  And especially young children that are still in developing stage need to learn to solve their problem with nonviolent way.

            However, this is not the only behavior they can learn from TV cartoons. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, through such programming children learn to fight, become victims, and encourage friend to fight because it is fun to watch.

             So, if you have a child, or sibling – you better be careful what s/he is watching, because TV is the greatest friend for each kid, but in the same time their biggest enemy. 


Reference:

American Academy of Pediatrics. "Pulling the Plug on TV Violence." HealthyChildren.org. 11 May 2013. Web. 12 May 2013. <http://www.healthychildren.org/English/family-life/Media/Pages/Pulling-the-Plug-on-TV-Violence.aspx>.

Are Wolves really in Sheep's Clothes??

Current television programming for kids is not that different than 20 years ago; however, the violence in it has changed into something extremely realistic and ubiquitous (Parents Television Council 2).  In recent study by ’Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing’’ by Parents Television Council, one can find answers on question like:  does TV influence kids to behave more violently and disrespectful towards parents, do children start with sexual life significantly earlier because of sexual content in TV cartoons, or how often violent content is seen in cartoons.  This extensive research was focusing on eight TV networks such as ABC, Fox, NBC, the Disney Channel, etc. airing mainly after school, which means from 3 p.m. - 10 p.m. during a week, and on Saturday from 7 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., and this process continued for four weeks.

 According to the PTC, during these four weeks they have found 3488 incidents of violence, which means that every hour children can see approximately 8 incidents of violence (7). Moreover, they have found 858 incidents of verbal abuse, 260 cases of instances of foul language (‘’stupid’’, ‘’loser’’, ‘’butt’’), 622 incidents of problematic attitudes/ behaviors like lying and bullying, 275 instances of sexual content, and lastly 295 instances of sexual concept (7). Parent Television Council focused also on the social relationships towards parents, and teachers, and they discovered that in most cases TV shows treat parents with a respect - 106 cases of positive, 94 cases of negative; however, teachers are portrayed negatively by 3:1 margin (8). These results were also described more complexly in terms of what TV channels is the worst, and which TV shows is showing the most violence scenes.

These findings are extremely terrifying, not only that we can clearly see that violent cartoons are everywhere, but the fact that children are impressionable, and they learn not only from parent, and peers, but also from television that contains of 3488 incidents of violence in 4 weeks  (Parents Television Council 2). And it is not a news that it was proven that violent programming increases the probably for violent behavior (Parents Television Council 3).  From my point of view, this paper perfectly summarizes the content that is available everyday for children, and frankly results are not positive at all. While reading this paper, I thought that every cartoon has some scene with violent content. And frankly, this is almost the case, because right now either if I watch cartoon with my 6 years old brother or 1 year old one, I can see fight scene, or inappropriate language everywhere. It is more than urgent to watch our children, talk to them about the content and always to remind them that this is fiction. Because they have been many people saying: ‘’ Why should I care, I have watched violent cartoons, and I just turned out fine’’ (Parents Television Council 2), but according to Parents Television Council, violence in cartoons is not new, but “what has changed is that the violence is ubiquitous, often sinister, and in many cases frighteningly realistic” (2). Moreover, these days cartoons are everywhere, not matter what time, you always have the access to watch it and it is not like before. If we will compare Vcelka Maja cartoon with the Naruto cartoon, I already talked about in my previous post, one can see that the violence is different in each cartoon. Because nowadays it is more realistic, and as Parents Television Council suggested it is more intense and graphic (17).  And as Parents Television Council claims parents must remember that TV is not only entertainment tool anymore - children younger than 8 years cannot really differentiate between reality and fantasy (18);therefore, they ‘’have to be vocal in opposing these cartoons, because companies sponsoring such content must know that they are helping to contribute to a culture of violence’’ (18). 

The winner of the most violent content - Teen Titus:

Reference:

Parents Television Council. Parents Television Council. 2 Mar. 2006. Web. 10 May 2013.

<http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/reports/childrensstudy/childrensstudy.pdf>

Interesting Websites To Go Through

If you would like to learn more about the threat of violence TV, visit this website: http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/tcom/faculty/ha/tcom103fall2004/gp9/

This site contains of all important aspects for you to know about this problematic. At this site, you will learn about the psychological, and behavior effects, but also about the subliminal messages that kids are exposed every day while watching cartoons. Moreover, you can learn about the increased risk of injury by 34% for small children while watching cartoons.

Another interesting site for you to go through is: 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1159766/Cartoon-violence-makes-children-aggressive.html.

In this article, you can find a summary of a research, done by Iowa State University, that proof that violence in cartoons DOES make children more aggressive.

Last, but not least, I would recommend you to look at this research paper by the American Academy of Pediatrics that looked at the effects of media on younger than 2 years children.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/1040.full?sid=90c428d6-df4a-4e16-8862-2ef44f314693

This study is extremely interesting, because one can see what are the consequences on young children, but also how the development can suffer. 

References:

Choma, C. J., Stevie Hossler, Robert Leu, Divia Nelson, Shawnte Ray, Ben Wilcox, and Brandon Ybarra. "Effects of Cartoons on Children." Weblog post. Bowling Green State University. N.p., 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/tcom/faculty/ha/tcom103fall2004/gp9/>.

Clark, Laura. "Cartoon Violence 'Makes Children More Aggressive'" Mail Online. N.p., 6 Mar. 2009. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1159766/Cartoon-violence-makes-children-aggressive.html.>.

Council on Communications and Media. "Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years."Pediatrics 128.5 (2011): 1040-1045. Media Use by Children Younger Than 2 Years. 1 Nov. 2011. Web. 10 May 2013. <http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/128/5/1040.full?sid=90c428d6-df4a-4e16-8862-2ef44f314693>. 

'Imperfect Parent' Talks About Cartoons

The other day, I ran on very nice blog called: Imperfect Parent. I thought that they will mostly talk about the recent sickness and the best product for babies. But then I found this post by Kimberly Younkin about TV Cartoons. Indeed, it was very interesting to see her point.

Kimberley is a mother of two boys that is sick of the fact that children’s programming is full of violence, guns, sex language, etc. In her post called: ‘A Rant on Violence in Cartoons’ she mentioned that she is ‘doing her homework’and looking at ratings of shows for children. Once when her boys were watching Jetix and their Batman, Superman, Spiderman shows, she went to search for the appropriate rating for these shows. By her surprise these shows are directed to older children, aged 7 and above. However, according to TV Guidelines.org:  ''It may be appropriate for children who have acquired the developmental skills needed to distinguish between make-believe and reality. Themes and elements in this program may include mild fantasy violence or comedic violence, or may frighten children under the age of 7. Therefore, parents may wish to consider the suitability of this program for their very young children''. 

Well, it is nice that they spend some time to actually write such ratings, but is it really fine for 7 years old child to see cartoons with containing automatic-weapon-toting villains, she asks? 

From my point of view, this is not fine; even though, I was exposed to violent cartoons too ( Tom&Jerry for example), and I did not have any major problems. But the time is different now, children are killing themselves and other because of fictional characters, they live in the fiction, they are not able to recognize the reality.

 So, the question is – what can we do now?           

Reference: Younkin, Kimberley. "A Rant on Violence in Cartoons." Web log post. Imperfect Parent. 5 May 2008. Web. 9 May 2013. <http://blog.imperfectparent.com/2008/05/05/a-rant-on-violence-in-cartoons/>.

One Click Away!

Another recent example that deserves attention is the fact that when children watch online cartoons can easily click on different video and watch whatever the specific website offers.

According to the article by Dailymail, a study, done by online security company Kaspersky, of 24, 000 school children showed that ‘’27 per cent of 7 to 11-year-olds and 41 per cent of 11 to 19-years-olds viewed 'hurtful or unpleasant' content, including scary videos, pictures and chain-mail, rude things and swearing, violent films or games”. From this study, we can clearly see that cartoons are not only dangerous because of its content, but also watching online cartoons might harm children, because of the openness of the internet.

I can support this article by my own experience; my brother loves to watch Pat and Mat on YouTuBe. I used to be fine about it, I thought that it is nice that I can play him video on the internet, it was obviously easy for me to do it like that. However, once I played one episode and left to different room. After a while I heard how he is laughing, so I went to see what is going on. I found out that he wanted to change the episode, so he clicked on different one that was dubbed into something awfully rude. In that moment, I have realized how dangerous this can be for small children.

Reference:

Edwards, Ann. "Children Just a Few Clicks Away From Explicit Content When They Watch Cartoons Online." Mail Online. 6 Feb. 2013. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2274217/Children-just-clicks-away-explicit-content-watch-cartoons-online.html>.

The power of Naruto cartoon

Violent cartoons are extremely powerful for children or young teenagers. One of the proofs of this statement is that on November, 2012, 14 years old boy commit suicide after his favorite Japanese character die in cartoon. This young boy jumped off from the top of the apartment block in Russia. His father claims that his biggest problem was to separate reality from the fiction; he was constantly in front of the TV, watching cartoons and pretending that he is a part of this fictional word.

The fact that 14 years old boy, that already supposed to be old enough to partially take care of him, took his life because of animated character is very disturbing. Therefore, I wondered why this cartoon was that influential for him. For this purpose, I went to Youtube.com and look at it by myself. I have never seen a cartoon that would look like animated sci-fi movie for adults. The main characters are fighting all the time, hysterically screaming at each other, or using sentences like: ‘ I am gonna kill you’. Obviously, this is not like our “Vcelka Maja”. I would not be afraid to say that such type of cartoon can have terrible consequences on young children that are not old enough to realize that the world they see in TV is fictional.

I attached one episode of Naruto cartoon for you to see and make your own opinion about this case, and also I attached one episode of Vcelka Maja cartoon, so you can compare it. 

Reference:

Weebb, Sam. "Russian Teen Leaps From Apartment Block After Seeing His Favorite Japanese Cartoon Character Die on Television." Mail Online. 1 Nov. 2012. Web. 6 May 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2226324/Russian-teen-leaps-apartment-block-seeing-favourite-Japanese-cartoon-character-die-television.html>.