Dora The Explorer, Spongebob Squarepants, And The Simpsons

The average American child watches 20 hours of television per week, that is 5,000 hours before first grade. Most children between the ages of 3-6 years old can even turn on the television and start a DVD by themselves. I am guilty of allowing my children more TV time then they should have, but I guess that is because I enjoy watching it myself. There are many hidden messages in children’s shows that I was oblivious to until now. For instance, in the show “Rugrats” Charlotte Pickles, Angelica’s mom never had time for her, always on the phone and working. Ethnic stereotyping is another message sent in Speedy Gonzalez’s cousin Slow Poke Rodriguez which is lazy, slow, and dim witted. Morality is also affected by these shows. Most every little boy

A highly debated topic that has recently appeared in the headlines is the question: Do TV shows stimulate cognitive development? In his article, Watching TV Makes You Smarter, author Steven Johnson vouches for the acceptance of TV as an effective cognitive enhancement for both children and adults. His main contention hinging on the fact that TV story lines have increased in complexity and ambiguity over the years, Johnson argues that watching modern shows like 24 and The Sopranos challenges our minds to track multiple threads and stimulates our thought processes to connect the dots between story lines. In other words, vegging in front of a TV screen has now become an intellectually stimulating activity because keeping track of modern plot lines requires mental expenditure. However, I think Johnson is mistaken because he fails to adequately acknowledge that modern TV has dulled our minds to the increasing violence and gore, lowered our standards of right and wrong, and encouraged an addiction-like obsession to the gripping

There are many movies, books, and TV shows that make fun of evil. The Simpsons, Family Guy, Aladdin, and all the Scary Movie movies. There are numerous ways in which each makes fun of evil. Scary Movie alone uses numerous ways to mock evil, and turns all these scary, evil things into something to laugh about. Aladdin has people who are supposed to be evil, and come up with all these ideas to destroy good, but it always turns around on the evil people and works out for good. The Simpsons has an episode where Homer sells his soul for a doughnut, and another episode where Homer kills Death. These TV shows and movies have something in common though, and that is the way they belittle evil. Most will have good triumph over evil which, models Augustinian theodicy. Why do many TV shows and movies ridicule evil? It could be any number of reasons. Perhaps people didn’t want to fear it anymore, and thus, belittled it and took away its power over people. Maybe it is for any other number of reasons. However, no matter the reason, these numerous TV shows and movies afore-mentioned, mock evil.

You just finished watching yet another episode of Looney Toons. You hear Porky Pig say his signature “T-Th-Tha Thats all Folks!” The screen turns black as the show ends. Your little mind is processing what you have just seen. The episode was funny, just the typical rabbit being chased with a gun. It is not a new scene. That silly Elmer is always finding a new way to kill Bugs Bunny: loading up his hole with dynamite, firing his gun, throwing him off a canyon, slamming him into a wall, running him over with his car, or starting a fire just to get Bugs Bunny to come out of his hole. Other television shows illustrate much worse. In Tom and Jerry, for example, all the episodes have the cat and mouse duo trying to kill each other, but for fun of

The aim of this research is to observe the use of signs in each character in cartoon “Spongebob SquarePants”. The research is focused on analyzing traits and behaviors of each character in this cartoon which represented signs. This paper describes meanings behind characters in cartoon “Spongebob SquarePants”. In this cartoon, there are seven main characters which have special traits. The behaviors and traits are a sign which represent something hidden. This research was made based on two research question which are representation of seven deadly sins in every character in cartoon “Spongebob SquarePants” and how cartoon “Spongebob SquarePants” influence cultures and kids in Indonesia.

Every time when I talk about kids animated shows with my friends, they usually don't want to watch it because they assume that it could be childish or it doesn't involve real people within it. It may be true that some cartoon shows might be pointless, however, various cartoons actually have some depth within it. It is understandable why some people dislike animated tv shows. They are usually not meant to be taken seriously, it is intended to have a humorous look on life and the situation at hand. This does not mean it cannot evolve into something much more. For example, the animated show Adventure Time involves playful stupidity while conveying dark stories and characters within its episodes and including meaningful themes in it.

When parents allow their child to watch DVDs that are advertised for infants, they often mistakenly attribute their child’s natural learning process to them watching the DVD (DeLoache et al., 2010). As a result, researchers have sought to find out if infants really are capable of learning from educational DVDs. This study sought to determine just this, whether children are capable of learning from a popular DVD targeting their age group (DeLoache et al., 2010). The researchers of this study wanted to make sure that they were able to measure the infants learning objectively therefore, they incorporated six elements into their study to ensure the data was valid (DeLoache et al., 2010). The study was performed in the homes of the infants who

For many years, parents have relied on using educational programs to teach and engage their children with new concepts and materials. Conversely, many children have also used television as an opportunity for learning and language development. For example, the rise of television programs like Elmo Street and Teletubbies demonstrates this upward trend of substituting media sources for teaching and learning. However, despite the increasing support from parents toward television programs, many researchers have mixed reviews on putting our children into viewing long hours of what they considered unnecessary learning. Thus in what follows of this paper, I will focus on explaining how television programs can support and facilitate word development. Moreover, I will also discuss the mixed literacy support for using television as a learning tool and finally, I will conduct a study that measures, specifically, the relationship between watching educational TV and learning novel words. Hopefully, with these measures, I will be able to find supporting evidence that proves educational TV can be a good predictor for word learning.

Some previous studies have suggested a longitudinal association between attention problems and early television viewing. However, Lillard and Peterson’s famous study has provided us an explanation of the relationship between the different types of television shows and young children’s executive function. They predicted the possibility of shot-term negative effects of television watching coming from its long-term impact on attention focusing even for adults. In addition, they noticed that the fast-paced shows seem to insert a stronger negative impact on either children or adults by “capturing attention in a bottom-up fashion.” (P2, middle left) Thus, they formed a hypothesis saying that compared to a slower-paced educational cartoon or self-paced activity such as drawing, a fast-paced cartoon show would have a more negative impact immediately on children’s executive functioning, a strong assessment associated with success in school. (P2, bottom left)

Despite disagreements between the overall effects of early childhood television viewing, it seems that nearly every expert suggests very limited time allotments for children. Functionalist theorists, especially, worry about the impact violent TV shows and twenty thousand commercials per year have on children at the elementary school age. The twenty thousand commercials seem almost moot when compared to the amount of product placement throughout the history of television and movies. Sometimes the promotion of consumption goes unnoticed—takes place subliminally—while other times, the programming has much more obvious advertising.

Educational TV is the most popular genre among young children. Parents report 61% of children often or sometimes watch educational shows, 52% watch children’s entertainment that frequently, 11% watch “general audience” shows like American idol or Modern Family. Educational TV peaks during 2 to 4 year old

Throughout childhood, everyone has at least a few favorite television shows they sat down and watched every morning or afternoon. While it may have not been apparent while viewing them as a child, these shows ultimately effects those who are watching them. Depending on the TV show and the advertisements during the program, these effects could be either negative or positive. When comparing my personal favorite TV shows from childhood, Arthur and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman, I found they ultimately would leave a positive impact on children, however Arthur proved to be possibly more detrimental to children than Fetch!.

There is no doubt that when it comes to American youth television is one of the biggest influences by far. Many parents would love to say that their child does not watch that much TV but in reality they are spending a lot of time watching television or using media in some way. “The study by the Kaiser Family foundation shows that children ages 2-8 spend an average of 5 ½ hours a day “consuming media” kids 8 and older spend even more time in front of the tube nearly 6 ¾ hours a day” (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2005 ). Astonishingly, more time is being spent with media then doing homework, studying or even spending time with family. A child’s retention of what

These authors attempt to demonstrate through experimental or survey procedures that children of a particular age or stage level accordingly do or do not use television characters' motivations when assessing their behaviors. This is a clear-cut example of directly borrowing developmental theoretical notions and demonstrating their applicability when children are processing television information. In other situations, however, cognitive development theory in general may be less useful in directly describing or predicting age-related changes in children's construction of meaning from television. For instance, we are only beginning to examine children's understanding of various kinds of filmic techniques, such as zooms, camera movements, and montage (see Salomon, 1979). One researcher in this area, Solomon (1979), argues that these and other sorts of filmic techniques-- indeed, the whole symbol system used on television for representing reality--may actually play a role in accelerating or otherwise affecting cognitive developmental changes among child viewers. That is, Solomon argues for a reverse causality, that just as child viewers' level of cognitive development may lead them to interpret television in a certain manner, television viewing may lead to changes in their level of cognitive abilities. This is a

In this aspect, it´s important to mention that the development of a child´s brain depending on what type of messages and stimulus he receives when he is small will strongly determine the way of thinking of that person when he grows up, so if we understand a little more about kids, it will be easier to comprehend the adult mind. Focusing also on the idea that stimulus for children are pretty important, specially in that stage that goes from the 8-10 years old, because it´s the time when they feel attracted to colorful themes, things that move, sounds, and many other things they can perceive with their senses. Second, still talking about senses, mass media plays a really important role in them, being the first one (specially talking about TV) to influence persons, particularly those in-development such as kids. This influence can be either good or bad depending on what they see, but that will affect their way of thinking nonetheless. As a third reason, and now referring to mass media economic business, it will help us realize and understand a little bit more why cartoons media and companies are so strong, and what type of stimulus they need to put and create in a cartoon in order to keep the attention of a children, in comparison to other type of shows, that even when they are really strong on TV, they don´t have a really major public in small children due to the