Impact of Cartoons on Children Research

Keywords: children and cartoons, cartoon effect children

Cartoon or animated movie is a form which uses optical illusion and movements of consecutive performing of many still images. The first cartoon in the world was “Fantasmagorie” which was made by a France artist, Emile Cohl in 1908. Produced in over 100 years ago, this film had no sound and was called silent film. With white stroke on a black board in class table the film about the adventure of the cartoon character called “Stick figure”. All are represented by dots and simple strokes.

Traditional animated cartoon, developed in early 1900s, was practiced by Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, Walt Disney and others. They had used 24 different pictures for each second of their animated movie.

The first complete cartoon was produced in 1991. However, cartoon was not recognized by worldwide audience until 1914 via category animation film “Gertie the Dinosaur” by producer John Bray.

In fact, in 1913, a film studio had producing as one’s only occupation and within 5 years, the new entertaining program was born. At that time, a lot of artist took part in animated and got a lot of success.

Early 30s of twentieth century, manufactures began to enhance color elements and sound in animation. The most representative works are maximum use of such elements as “Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs” (1973), this is the long animated the first episode in the history of the genre. “Pinocchio” (1940) was a cartoon produced by technical systems and the last complete.

Frequently, people think cartoons are made by many simple drawing and just put them on order. In most people’s opinion, cartoons are several pictures describe consecutive actions. In fact, the second though is true. However, nowadays, in order to bring out a perfect product; producers have to make a lot of specific things.

We have brief proceed about how to make a short cartoon movie. A cartoon movie, even just 30 or 80 minutes also need a number of producer and amount of time to make it completely. Everything starts from the idea, as soon as the script has done, a group of artists begin develop many storyboard which include brief conversations and the sound in the movie. After director checked the storyboard out, they move on to sound recording. Many people whose voice suit with character in the movie will be invited to dub. The sound will be deal with and provided on the number of frame on the movie and written called paper the dope sheet. Next to this step, the main parts of the movie are performed. Rough layout will be drawn first; in this part, artist just only use the pencil for perspective, arrangement of character and design. At the same time, animators make movements and after all of these the producers will make a test of lead draft and move on to check the film composition out. Then, they add more colors and theme on movie and move it to computer in order to join the scenes with the sounds. Finally, they check it out again to fix the problems and public. The cartoon making spends a lot of time. It usually takes them, on average, 6 to 12 months or maybe more just only to make a half hour cartoon. It is truly a difficult job.

Watching cartoon had many bad effects on children. According to her, even in cartoon, children effected by violence across the screen kicking, killing each other with frequency of about 20 time an hour. Children watch violence images on television many hours a week there will have many violence actions as hitting, punching, biting his parents, sibling and friends. For advertising of food and alcohol, young tend to think the food in advertisements is good for health and not interested in the importance of vegetable in their diet. In addition, kids watch more cartoon are less physically active, easy weight gain leading to obesity while in young ages, children need to play creatively to social development. Finally, cartoon or television also influences a children’s eyesight if they focus on looking at the screen for prolonged periods.

Method

I. Participants:

The researcher chose 100 people from many areas in Hanoi who have different jobs and ages. The participants in this study are:

• 20 students are working in Banking Academy, Hanoi, Vietnam.
• 30 kids from Katie’s living place.

(Mage = 15.6 years, age range: 8 – 18 years)

• 20 younger parents who have kids

(Mage = 27.3 years, age range: 23 – 35 years)

• 30 adults live around Hoan Kiem Lake

(Mage = 36,3 from 19 – 45 years)

In those participants, researcher chose 3 people to ask them a lot of special question. All of them have kid on school-age:

Nguyễn Ngọc Hoa, 29 years old, lives in Hanoi and she is a business woman. She has two children, one kid is 7 years old and the other one is 10 years old.

Nguyá»…n Phúc Lâm, 32 years old, lives in Hanoi and works as a director in a Japan Company. He has a son whom is 9 years old.

Lò A Páo, 27 years old and lives in Hanoi. He works as sale manager on a company.

I choose participants of different age living in different area to be objective and results of comprehensive. I focus on those who are kids by age group most influenced by this art. As young adults age is less influenced.

I. Procedure:

First, the researcher collected the information from some source such as: newspaper, books, Internet and so on. Then, basing on it, the researcher made some relevant questions for adults and people who care about Cartoon. Thirdly, the researcher met them in persons and interviewed to get more information. With the adults, the researcher asked them filling questionnaire or ask and the researcher filled the question list for children. After that, some quotation were cited, analyzed and compared. Finally, the researcher showed the conclusion from studies.

Results

Many reports have mentioned and researches about the opinion of people about media, including cartoon, and its affect to the people’s life.

Stevie Hossler (August, 2011) said that typically, children begin watching cartoon on television at an early age of six month, and by age two or three, children become enthusiastic audience. This has become a problem because there are too many children are watching TV too much and these programs (even cartoon) become violent and addictive. Children watch cartoon too much on TV are more likely to have mental problems and feelings, along with brain and eyes injuries and unexpectedly the risk of a physical problem increase. Furthermore, because of seeing violent on TV, children become less sensitive to hurting and affliction of others, they are not afraid of violent and easily become aggressive or use harmful action towards other people.

Besides above results that I found in references, I also had a survey with 100 people have different ages (from 6 to over 45 years old and come from many different areas around Hanoi) on the question: “Do you watch cartoon movie?” and if yes: “How old are you?”. Then, I build on one pie chart that shows us “Which are age groups who usually watch cartoon?”

Nowadays, cartoon movies are very popular and improve very quickly. Variety of cartoon movies were built for every age. From this chart we can see easily that at the period of age from 28 – 35, the percentage of people watch cartoon is 6 percent, makes up the smallest part of the pie chart. In that period of age, people usually too busy with their job and have no time to watching television, relaxing, even playing with their kids. A few of them spend the weekend to do those things, however it is just a short time.

Hoa said that: “I work as a business person so I have a lot of things to worry about, such as counting numbers, business, bosses, colleagues and so on. All of them make me crazy to dealing with. However, I still try to spend time playing with my girls, especially watching their favorite animation together”.

While, children on school – age are the ones who watch cartoon the most. On the research, all kids watch cartoon every days, they watch it at home, at school and spend at least 3 hours per day for looking at television screen. It is really a huge number

Moreover, we had a survey of a number of people who watch cartoon to find answers of the question: “What kind of cartoon movie do you watch?”

Discussion

When we did the research about cartoon with many people, there are two opposite opinions.

Nobody can deny that cartoons have many surface advantages. First, watching cartoon movie is a useful entertainment activity for children and adults. A child can lie down quietly on sofa and just watch his favorite cartoon, instead of running around or screaming when his parents are working so they can play with their kid. Moreover, cartoons also have important effect on adults, especially the couples whose young children. After several busy working hours, parents can sit next to their kids and watch cartoon together. Thank to this film, they can relax completely and have a chance to stay their children nearer. These things are better than plunging into job immediately after arriving home and do not spend any time talking to the children.

Nguyá»…n Ngọc Hoa (29 years old, Hanoi) said that: When my daughter was younger than she is now, after working time, I arrived home and just focused on housework such as cleaning, washing, cooking and so on. Because of my job, I did not have enough time to play with my child and usually took her play by herself or with her friends next door. Recent time, I have spent more time watching “Tom and Jerry” and other cartoons on Disney channel or Cartoon Network. I realize that when I watching cartoons with my daughter, the conversation between me and my kid become closer than ever. Now, I understand my honey more clearly, know what she wants, what she thinks, what she needs, and how she grows day by day. As a mother, I really feel very happy and so glad to understand her.

J.Wolffe, an animation researcher wrote in an article on April, 23, 2012 that the animation is where kids learn how the hero is really, when she was a child, she could learn to pronounce quickly difficult words which make people confusing when listen to them. Smart will help you get almost everything and there is always anybody is more intelligent than you, animation teaches all that. Why? Because, via animation kids can learn and understand quickly when they are entertaining, which is one of the reason why children have difficulty learning from teachers, the pressure makes them liable to remember vocabulary as fast as sing a song in animation.

“At home, I always buy CD or open a cartoon channel to watch many funny movies with my son. In the past, my child was very active; he always run around house, from a room to another room and never sits quietly on a place within thirty minutes. However, since he has watched cartoon, he can sit on chair with concentration to television without saying any word. Furthermore, after watching a movie, if he does not get anything on this film, he will try to discover by asking me or other ones. He also often dram the characters on cartoon scene, training every day and improves it day by day. I am so proud of my little boy” said Nguyá»…n Phúc Lâm (32 years old, Hanoi).

Not only does cartoon bring happy time for parents with their children, but it also is a special teacher for kids, who is closest and most friendly with younger generation. Nowadays, there are many cartoon series which including educative programs. It teaches children arithmetic, drawing by using beautiful and attractive shape and funny situation. Besides that, via a lot of movies, kids can learn about some knowledge around them, improving their grasp and learning. Some programs teach 7- and 8- years old a little of a foreign language, such as English – an international language. Learning English from young is an important step for language ability for children in the future. In addition, animated films have a lot of funny and eye-catching picture which attract the kids so these points will help develop and enrich the children’s imagination.

A vast number of people think that watching cartoon is totally good and it does not have any bad influence on children and adults. In fact that opinion is not absolute true. Cartoon is a kind of movie which causes addiction easily. More and more kids have trend toward sitting on room and they prefer watching cartoon to going out and playing with other kids, doing exercise or other activities. Sitting and watching animated movies several hours like that can make the kids sink into the world of many imaginary characters, they can use that time to do more useful work, instead of wasting it only on watching cartoon.

Cartoon is just a program used to relax and improve kid’s brain; it cannot replace healthy activities which will train children’s body. Moreover, base on an unpublished study perform by Mary Fenway, watching cartoon on several hours cause autism for 46% of children who usually do this work and they will find difficult on opening relationship. This is really an unexpected disadvantage of watching cartoon, which nobody is looking forward to.

Besides that, nowadays, appeared many animated companies just care about their profit and are insensitive to their product’s affection for younger generation.

Lò A Páo (27 years old, Hanoi) said that: “I usually let my son watching cartoon himself because he is very interested in this funny program. However, recently, I feel that my son got mad more often than he had been, lazy to eat and sometime he beat his classmate in kindergarten. I felt very nervous and could not explain what the reason was. A few day later, I found that a cartoon channel that my child usually watch for, project an animated movie whose a lot of violent scene. Immediately, I delete that channel because it made much bad influent on my kid. Instead, I let my son watch a lot of educative cartoon and care more about what he watches”.

In modern life, many parents are busy with their jobs and do not notice what their child watch. Bad animated movies bring a lot of evil effect on young people, teach them things and make them have the wrong view about the lives around. Furthermore, a few animated movies which are made for adults, has unsuitable content with kids and effect on the children’s souls if they watch those movies accidentally. 

        American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and American of Child Psychiatry and adolescents (AACAP) felt that television does not affect the behavior of children as young an age.

From their research, the AACAP countries, “Kids watch shows in which violence is very realistic, frequently repeated or unpunished, are more likely to imitate what they see”. They also said that children’s parents need to keep a close eye on what their kids watch, and explain for children that the cartoon character was shot was not hurt, but really would be seriously injuries or die in real life. They should tell their kids that violence is not the best ways to deal with a conflict.

In conclusion, because of a lot of cartoon’s affections on children’s life and character in future, choosing a best cartoon for kids is an important work with who are mothers and fathers. In addition, there is an alarm for the industry for kids; they need block the commercial cartoon, give back the innocent, pure and suitable animated movies for the future generation of the world.