Cartoons are an unavoidable part of every child’s life. Since the appearance of cartoon films in the 1970s, Generations of children had been watching animated films and grown up. Traditional animated tales like Cinderella, Peter Pan, Aladdin, and the Magic Lamp, Beauty and the Beast, etc. Frankly speaking not only children even the adults are fond of it. Looking at these cartoons children start developing the characters which they see. Girls imagine about being princesses and boys have predicted themselves to be prince or kings. However, cartoons can have both positive and negative effects on mental development and behavior on child health.
Negative Effect on child health
- Cartoons on television or now a day even in mobiles have a mesmerizing effect, especially on kid’ health.
- It drives them away from their studies, games and from any other important learning activities. So, the habit of children to watch it must be controlled.
- The concentration in studies decreases.
- Overeating takes place when eating is done while watching cartoons on TV. This effect’s a lot on child health.
- This results in different diseases like obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc. In a way, child health starts deteriorating
- Continuously watching cartoons in TV weakens eyesight, lack of physical exercise makes the body drowsy, problems of sleeping disorder arises. This is the major drawback of these cartoons on child health.
- Children are expert imitators they try to do whatever they see in cartoons.
- Many times they learn violence from the cartoons even if they don’t do it intentionally.
- Both the parents often go to work nowadays so they provide amenities like TV computer, video games, etc. and think that their responsibility is covered. But what will be the after effect on child health gets unnoticed?
- By watching cartoon programs unsupervised, children try to copy the violent characters they see in cartoons or video games.
- This is the reason kids are now a day’s aggressive, full of anger and fearful.
- Generally, cartoons programs look fascinating but not at the cost of child health.
- The parents put on the cartoons on TV to make their child happy and eventually it becomes their habit even small children often becomes habit waited to watch cartoons.
Positive Effect
In today’s scenario, it is not possible to keep the children away from the cartoons yet a little control is a must. Fix the time for watching cartoons or playing games. Don’t allow him to watch for more than one hour. Divert the attention of the child get him to walk or play in the park. If his energy is not utilized in the right direction he may deviate.
- But, watching cartoons to some extent is also useful and help them to be more creative and decision maker.
- They generate many ideas and use them at the time of need.
- They think creatively, which means they think of new ideas, new innovations and new solutions. This turns out to be very positive on child health.
- Creative thinking also makes the mind sharp and there is less mental tension.
- Through cartoons children get into the habit of learning things at a very early stage, it teaches shapes, numbers, and colours.
- Such cartoons teach them smartly in a play way method with lots of fun and interaction, thus making learning an enjoyable activity. The colourful visuals make learning interesting for children.
- Cartoons can help develop a child’s cognitive skills like a good memory, sustained and selective attention, and logic and reasoning, visual and auditory processing.
- Cartoons can also render children to different languages, thus helping children in developing their linguistic skills.
- Cartoons assist in increasing the child’s imagination and creativity. A positive cognitive development of child health.
- The child can think of new ideas inspired by the cartoons and come up with new stories or artwork based on cartoons that they have seen.
- Children find cartoons amusing and often laugh out loud which is a good stress buster and a confidence builder.
- It also boosts immunity and causes the release of endorphins that cause us to have positive feelings. child health starts improving with these cartoons.
- Cartoons are also a good teacher, teach kids about local customs, traditions, history, and mythology.
- Watching animated versions of the Ramayana or Mahabharata can teach kids about Indian mythology.
- Watching cartoons about Aesop’s Fables or Panchatantra can teach children about good morals, kindness, and compassion.
Overall, the gist, in our opinion, is that cartoons will have a positive effect on child health with respect to their growth and development, but it should be in a controlled environment. Too, much of anything is always bad, so, it becomes the prime duty of parents to manage a proper schedule of the children which could help them to grow all around.
Cartoons are good for child health
Provided healthy cartoon programs are watched and for 1 hour
