Influence of Cartoons on Children

It can be easily remarked, then, that cartoons fill a major portion of a child's time when watching children's and family television programming. The question must be asked, "What type of influence - negative or positive - do cartoons have upon children?" The answer, as this paper shall attempt to illustrate, is colored in shades of grey.

Media philosopher Marshall McLuhan in the preface to his classic 1963 essay "Medium is the Message," recounts that prior to writing the cultural environment was primarily oral - an environment that changed dramatically during the era of Plato with the predominance of the written word as purveyor of the cultural mien:

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articularly cartoon programming aimed at children) works to supplant the oppressed oral cultural environment with a supported visual one - on a truly international scale. Mimesis, or imitation, is described by Toynbee as an important element in the accumulation of a shared cultural value system (161-166); given the primary teaching role assigned it by Norman Cousins, above, television provides the essential role models for the child to imitate. Cartoons, given their predominance in children's television programming, are the most consistent daily transmitter of the civilization's cultural values. At this point an examination of child development theory bolsters the Cousins' interpretation of the role television cartoons plays in relation to the evolution of the cultural environment as proposed by McLuhan and supported by the historical analysis of Toynbee vis-a-vis mimeses and myth. The focus market of children's cartoon programming covers the ages three through eight, roughly the same period described by educational psychologist Jean Piaget as the "Preoperational period": The period ... is characterized by ... the appearance of the semiotic function, that is, the representational, or symbolic, function. This includes langua
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Approximate Word count = 2241
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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