Does Violence in Cartoons Desensitize Young Children?

Does craze in sketchs Desen mock upize Young Children? A Critical View Donald Duck, Elmer Fud, Wiley Coyote, Tom/Jerry, Fred Flintst single, and Batman are all loveable vignette characters that exist in the vignettes shaverren draw every(prenominal) day. An some other thing these characters view as in common is their general habitual boisterous behaviors. These behaviors devote a subliminal message to small fryren suppressing their moral restraint on basic appall toward to to each matchless one other. Violence in youth has been a rising topic, and stay freshs to amaze with much(prenominal) than studies and research each stratum.Although people may blame legion(predicate) things, I believe the power depicted as humor or the first-rate admirer strength in resumes has a direct relation back to the desensitization of madness in the Ameri potty youth. Research has exposed that lateborn children will imitate aggressive acts they exit on television, and rec reate those acts when compete with their friends. Before age 4, children are unable to distinguish amidst concomitant and fantasy and may view furiousness as an ordinary occurrence. (Berensin) by means of critical analysis I plan to examine the effects of frenzy in cartoons as sanitary as the derivedic perception and the super mavin effect in order to determine if they relate partly or executely too untrained behaviors of young children. Every argument has more(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) than one perception, so I will all overly be examining just about research suggesting that cartoon wildness in occurrence does not hazard developing children. Watch an obsolete Looney Toon, if you have a choice, perceive an episode of Elmer Fud chasing Bugs Bunny.To any viewer you see the humor in it a bunny is jumping all over dodging this slow hunting find, his ineffable aim, and his shotgun that never needs to be reloaded. But the reality is this hunter is fe rociously chasing this bunny literally just trying to kill it. drop the same reality comparison with the Roadrunner cartoons, the coyote is a predator chasing after his dinner and use every possible resource to complete it yea he never catches his prey, but you quarter try and compute the violent episode that would entail if he did.How about all the explosions and incredulous distances the coyote deals with and never seems to die, that doesnt send the make up image. Im not saying they should channelize death but not present it trick give children the idea that these acts wont affect them and that they would also be able to walk away. Violence in cartoons has been around for a lot longer then we think, in fact there is more military group depicted in a cartoon, than in live feat dramas or comedies (Potter and Warren 1998). In a sense, children see more violence during a Saturday morning than a Friday night.Although this is a pretty strong convert argument there is always other perspective. For fashion model, the violence in cartoons yes is more frequent, but it isnt as strong as it is on superlative eon TV. Bam Bam hitting someone on the head with his mallet compared to a short rape scene in Law and order, pretty mammoth difference. Many cartoons show characters dying but the way it is comprehend its considered funny. Prime time television shows murder depicted in a pretty real state with no joke or express emotion afterwards. In 2007, Kremar and Hight embed that preschoolers who watched an action cartoon or super-hero image, as foreign to young children who watched neutral video clips or animated characters, were more credibly to create aggressive story endings(An oppose View). These conclusions brought about the idea that pugnacity may be related to aggressive behavior. How does the outcome television violence unremarkably end in destructive behavior? That brings us to another form of cartoon violence, the super hero effect. By super hero I mean super hero cartoons Batman, Superman, Spiderman, transformers etc.All these cartoons depict violence without the comedic effect but instead with a real intent scenario. Heroes are violent, and, as such, are rewarded for their behavior. They become role models for youth. It is cool to carry an automatic branch and use it to knock off the bad cat-o-nine-tailss. The normal scenario of using violence for a righteous cause may translate in workaday life into a justification for using violence to retaliate against perceived victimizers (Berensin) Everyone sees Batman beating up the Joker and instead of being worried or cin one caserned, theyre cheering.Theyre hoping that the hero will win the fight. Batman is showing how he solves his conflicts with violence rather than reason and debate. The good guys against the villains, and just because its usually the good buy beating up the bad guy, its clam up a form of violence that can be subconsciously affecting them. Kids cou ld be going to school and argue who stepped into line first succeeding(a) thing you know theyre pushing and shoving over it, then throwing punches, imitating their ducky super heroes.In an extreme example a ten year old boy from Everett, Washington died in 2008 imitating a stunt him and their friends saw on a popular cartoon, Naruto. Naruto has this ability to dig himself into sand and breathe through a straw. The children thinking they could execute this like Naruto came to an unexpected and very worrying conclusion. Those children lost a close friend that could have possibly been avoided had they been better on the diversity of animation and reality.This brings us to another problem with super heroes on television, which is the characters, no matter how much damage or violence they receive, continue to remain unharmed and alive. When in reality if any human being being actually received any pain like they are, they plainly would not be alive. Superman surviving a hailstorm of bullets is the best example that comes to mind. Yvette Middleton and Sandra Vanterpool wrote an essay TV Cartoons Do Children Think They Are Real? , regarding whether children can differentiate between what is real and what is fantasy in cartoons, as well as how they respond to them.On page five of their essay they go on to say When our young children watch cartoons with these types of violence, they start to visualize themselves as their favourite(a)(a) cartoon character and decide that if they are that character, they wont be harmed if they get shot of run over by the bad guy Its when the child imitates these characters that they could be seriously scathe or hurt someone else. A parents duty comes into walkover when they sit down with the child and explain what happens scene by scene. Something a child sees on television isnt necessarily bad beholding it once or twice.After those first two a parent could explain what scenes send a bad message. Instead the child watches tim e and time again, each time desensitizing their moral defense, eventually leading to frequent violent behavior. For example every time a child sees a violent act they first see it as bad. As time progresses and they see more and more, the child begins to simply absorb the message as if it were an everyday occurrence. They may come to see violence as a fact of life and, over time, lose their ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. Its at that point that it becomes a problem.Eugene V Beresin, the theatre director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, wrote an denomination for the American academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Today 99% of homes have televisions. In fact, more families have televisions than telephones. Over half of all children have a television set in their bedroomschildren watch or so 28 minute of arcs of television a week, more time than they spend in school. Thats four hours an average day, thats a sixth of their lives. Thats plenty of time for the children to withhold the messages they get from violent cartoons.Children can severalise and recall these events because they laugh afterwards and think of it as a bearable way to respond to someones actions. Televised violence and the inhabitance of televisions in American households have increased steadily over the days. Beresin continues on to say The typical American child will view more than 200,000 acts of violence, including more than 16,000 murders onwards age 18. Television programs display 812 violent acts per hour childrens programming, particularly cartoons, displays up to 20 violent acts hourly. Now hopefully a young child is only watching cartoons and not a police or plague show. But four hours a day with twenty violent acts hourly, thats eighty violent acts scene daily. That can put a monetary value on a developing childs moral psych. With every argument there are two sides. As I mentioned previously there are other perceptions and different cultural views on cartoon violence. I came across an article by Fran Blumberg, Kristen Bierwirth, and Allison Schwartz, titled Does Cartoon Violence Beget Aggressive Behavior in Real spirit?An Opposing View. The ladies explain Despite increased realism in animation over time, most preschoolers still recognize cartoon programs as make-believe, and can differentiate cartoon characters engaged in life-like activities from those engaged in playact activities. Basically what theyre getting at is that children have the ability to put one over that cartoons are not real, know that the violence is only animated, and understand that it is wrong. To fold up anything is wrong people always rely on the science of it.V Mathews was one of the authors who composed the article, Media violence liked to concentration, produce in the Journal of ready reckoner help Tomography. Mathews confirms Neurological evidence of a link between mental picture to violence on television and brain functioning. Speci? cally, non-aggressive children who had been exposed to high levels of media violence showed less activity in the betal cortex, that area of the brain linked to attention and self-control. Non-aggressive children who already had a grip on what was morally right and wrong I would assume were the ones used. So they werent children who were brand new to violence.Also there is a slight hole in the study. It was measured directly after the children watched the violent cartoons, and not over a long end of time, which is what were dealing with. A study taken by Yvette Middleton and Sandra Vanterpool surveyed 23 third stainrs from the Fordham section of the Bronx. We asked them fourteen questions based on the descend of time they spent watching cartoons, the types of cartoons they watch and their opinions on whether cartoons are real or not. (Middleton and Vanterpool) 87% of the students surveyed say they watch cartoons before school, after s chool, and season doing their homework.If that wasnt enough, 86% of the students watch cartoons before bed. With twenty-five to thirty violent acts an hour (Middleton and Vanterpool) that is a lot of negative discipline that child is absorbing. The ladies continue their results 78% of the students express they watch cartoons with a sibling or fiend. 17% of the students give tongue to that they watch cartoons by themselves, but only 4% said that they watch cartoons with a parent (Middleton and Vanterpool) Only four percent of third graders watch cartoons with their parents.Now that is just not high enough. With cartoon violence becoming a rising problem parents need to stop using the television as a babysitter and know what their children are watching. On the subject of the students favorite cartoon, Rugrats was chosen as the top favorite, a quite non-violent Nickelodeon Cartoon. turn was Pokemon, a cartoon involving people using different animals/pets and pitting them against e ach other to settle their differences, definitely violent.The third was Dragon Ball Z, an exceedingly violent anime involving numerous characters always fighting each other for control, also chosen as the most popular action cartoon as well as the top favorite if they were limited to one cartoon a day (Middleton and Vanterpool). When asked about Dragon Ball Z the results told us43% said that they enjoy watching the characters fight, 26% said that they like to see characters shoot other characters and 30% also enjoyed seeing characters being blown up, bloodied, or stabbed (Middleton and Vanterpool).That is discouraging this is a television show that children should not be watching. If these are the thoughts that go through their mind while watching, think about what they think of when they arent watching. When Middleton and Vantepool surveyed the children about the reality of the violence, 56% said that they were real and 43% felt they were not real. That is not a good statistic, over half of the class thought that the characters were real. These are sham people who literally destroy each other and third grade children think they are real. 86% agreed they come back to life to start the action all over again, whereas 13% felt a character remains dead and is never seen again. That is a large amount of children who are uneducated on the subject of death. But from another perspective, they are just children and more than likely cant comprehend death, and they are just going off what they see in the show. Some interest information came up when the children were asked what they think happens to real people die. 47% said the somebody goes to heaven, 47% said the person goes to hell, and 4% said the person goes under the ground and comes back as a flower. (Middleton and Vantepool) So you can see how these are still children and arent mature enough to understand what is really happening in a cartoon. This again just brings up the parenting aspect. In the 2004 Confe rence on interaction and Design and Children, an article was published about preschoolers moral judgments and their distinctions between realistic and cartoon-fantasy transgressions. M. Peters and F. C. Blumberg explained in good accompaniment about a study they conducted using three and four year old children.They examined how the children reacted to pictures of both factual human and animated moral transgressions including hitting, pushing, stealing, and failing to share. (Peters and Blumberg) The children then were asked to indicate the extent to which the transgressions merited punishment and if so, how severe. They also were asked to justify this assessment. We found that preschoolers negatively evaluated all moral transgressions, both realistic and cartoon (Peters and Blumberg). once again the problem arises with the short amount of exposure time.Although since they were three and four years old I would assume that they had been watching cartoons for an already long time. Peters and Blumberg continue to review their findings When perceiving the magnitude of the transgression, children viewed physical harm as more rank than that of psychological harm. Speci? cally, hitting was seen as more harmful to others and as be of greater punishment than failing to share. This meant that children do retain some information pertaining to their morals while theyre progressing as children. They were able to realize what was more ethical and correct.What was really interesting was how the preschoolers judged cartoon infringement as more harmful than the realistic human transgressions. Because cartoons are characterized by exaggerated nervus facialis expressions and body actions, these characteristics may have in? uenced the childrens perceptions of the cartoon transgressions as bad. (Peters and Blumberg) With that information we can think about how much those characteristics actually come into play in the maturing stages of a childs life. The message could be more of a learning experience for them instead of pro violence advice.Children could be using these cartoons as an example for instances in the future. Its short possible that children would use these when faced with a real life issues and fixity the situation without using violence. Writing this paper has been an eye opener for me. At the beginning I was on the side against cartoon violence, agreeing that it does make children more violent in nature. But after all the research I did I am now on the fence with the situation. It can alter the children but also help them to learn what is right and what is wrong.Ultimately the parent comes into the play the most. I wouldnt agree that sitting you child in front of the television is a bad idea, but what programs the children watch should be monitored. Also, using the television as a baby sitter is not a recommended idea. Children love cartoons, I know I still do, and there is no reason they have to stop watching them, but Mom and dad dy should make sure what is happening in these cartoons is put into context for the child. So the child can differentiate and decide for themselves the difference between cartoon animation and reality.Beresin, Eugene V, M. D. The Impact of Media Violence on Children and Adolescents Opportunities for Clinical Interventions. American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry. Web. 11 May 2010. http//www. aacap. org/cs/root/developmentor Blumberg, Fran, Kristen Bierwirth, and Allison Schwartz. Does Cartoon Violence Beget Aggressive Behavior in Real Life? An Opposing View. Early Childhood learning JournalOct. 2008 101+. Education Research Complete. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. Mathews, V. P. , Kronenberger, W. G. , Wang, Y. , Lurito, J. T. , Lowe, M. J. , Dunn, D.W. (2005). Media violence linked to concentration, self-control. Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography, 29, 287292. Middleton, Yvette Vanterpool, Sandra TV Cartoons Do Children Think They Are Real? Reports-Research. Web produce 1999 http//www. eric. ed. gov. ezproxy. lib. uwm. edu/PDFS/ED437207. pdf Peters, K. M. , Blumberg, F. C. (2004). Preschoolers moral judgments Distinctions between realistic and cartoon-fantasy transgressions. Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Interaction Design and Children Building a Community (pp. 131132). New York ACM