Can you let your child watch cartoons safely? The correct way to watch cartoons

Parents with cute kids at home must be familiar with cartoons. Overseas, there is Disney's Princess Elsa's Let it Go, and domestically, Big Bear and Little Bear have progressed from TV series to big movies; Peppa Pig has made children addicted to jumping in mud puddles. What role will Martin play today?

Although cartoons have always given people the impression of infinite innocence, some of their contents still pose psychological risks. Recently, two episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, a famous cartoon that accompanied the 85s and 90s, were deleted by a children's channel in the United States because they were not suitable for children to watch. What kind of cartoons are suitable for children to watch? In the new media era, what should parents pay attention to regarding the time their children spend watching cartoons?

01

There is a science to choosing the subject matter

Pay attention to the "psychological value" of cartoons

Parents should understand and control the content of the cartoons their children are watching. For children and teenagers of any age, watching TV programs containing violence, pornography and non-mainstream values ​​is harmful! Children who are constantly exposed to the visual impact of violent programs will become insensitive to violence. They will think that since such violence can be seen everywhere, it is acceptable. Boys will believe that they can succeed through violence, and for girls, TV programs containing non-mainstream values ​​make them think that appearance will determine their destiny, that it is okay to have sex with strangers, or that they believe that "buy, buy, buy" can solve their emotional problems.

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In addition to avoiding violence and pornographic elements, parents should also pay attention to the psychological value conveyed by cartoons when choosing cartoons. For example, the routine of each episode of "Boonie Bears" is basically that Bald Qiang wants to chop down a tree, and Big Bear and Little Bear tease Bald Qiang and stop him from chopping down the tree, and Bald Qiang calls them stinky bears. In this process, if children learn to tease others and use violence against others, it will be detrimental to their psychological growth. On the contrary, cartoons like "Peppa Pig" are more helpful for children's growth. Children can get inspiration from positive parenting from the pig father and mother, and learn how to get along with family and friends from Peppa Pig and her pig brother George.

02

Watching animation for too long

May be detrimental to children’s brain and language development

In this era of highly interconnected information, television and network media are one of the important ways for children to understand the world. From birth, babies can encode the information they perceive, store this information in their memory, and unconsciously produce imitative behavior. For example, babies will look at their mother's face for a long time and imitate the simple action of their mother sticking out her tongue. Infants and young children can obtain new information from videos suitable for their age. If parents can control the viewing time of their children when they watch animations and provide some appropriate guidance on the content, they can help their children actively understand the world.

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The reason for strictly controlling viewing time is that in addition to the damage to children's eyesight caused by watching animations for a long time, too long viewing time may also hinder the development of children's brain and language.

A study published in the international academic journal Plos One in 2015 investigated the relationship between television viewing time and language ability of 1,778 Korean children aged approximately 2 years old. After eliminating some confounding factors, the results showed that for 2-year-old children, if they watch TV for more than 2-3 hours a day, the risk of language delay will increase by 2.7 times compared to children who watch TV for less than 1 hour a day; for those who watch TV for more than 3 hours a day, the risk of language delay will increase by 3 times.

Moreover, in 2015, a Japanese scholar Hikaru Takeuchi1 conducted a study in which the experimenter recruited 276 children aged 5 to 18, investigated the time these children spent watching TV every day, their verbal IQ, and scanned their brain structures. The results showed that the longer the children watched TV, the larger the gray matter volume in the medial prefrontal lobe and the frontal polar cortex. The gray matter volume in these two areas is inversely proportional to verbal intelligence (including vocabulary learning and control, language comprehension and use, textual logical thinking ability, etc.). In other words, the longer the children watched TV, the lower their verbal intelligence. The reason behind this may be related to the increase in gray matter volume in the medial prefrontal lobe and the frontal polar cortex. A few years later, 216 of the children underwent brain structure scans again and found that the longer they watched TV, the larger the gray matter volume in the thalamus and sensorimotor areas. Although the correlation between these phenomena cannot fully explain the causal relationship, it at least suggests that watching TV for too long is not a good thing for children.

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So what is the appropriate length of time? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that for infants under three years old, except for video chatting, they should avoid using any electronic screen devices; for children aged three to five, parents should choose high-quality TV programs, no more than 20 minutes each time, and watch them with their children; children aged five to ten can only watch a maximum of 40 minutes of programs a day, and they should close their eyes or look into the distance to rest appropriately in between; teenagers aged 10 to 18 should not watch programs for more than 2 hours a day, and parents should help them actively understand what they see and explain and guide the content.

03

When watching TV

Provide children with appropriate companionship and guidance

If you want to effectively control your child's screen time, it is not enough to impose strict restrictions. Parents must first make their children feel that "Mom and Dad are with me and understand me." It is recommended that when children watch TV, parents also join this entertainment activity, discuss the program with their children, integrate into it, and get along with their children. After half an hour, invite the child to leave the TV and join other "entertainment activities", such as healthy games, reading, etc. At the same time, parents can also buy more paper reading materials at home, including books, magazines, etc., so that children have ample opportunities to access reading materials. For some long stories, you can also choose some audio materials and play them for your children. Audio stories with reasonable content and well-made production can better attract children's attention and stimulate their imagination.

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As a parent, you should always ask yourself a question: If your child doesn't watch TV/mobile phones/computers/tablets, and doesn't watch those cartoons, what can he/she do? Most importantly, parents should also reduce the time they use mobile phones and electronic screens at home. Even if parents are using their mobile phones to handle work, their children may not understand and think, "Since you can watch mobile phones, I can also watch TV." Therefore, parents' "leading by example" will always be more effective than any preaching.

References:

[1] Wu Yue, Qu Weili, Zhuang Xuan, et al. Research progress on screen time and children and adolescent health[J]. Chinese Journal of Child Health, 2020(9).

[2] Chen Xi. Research on the relationship between screen time and adolescent physical and mental health: A case study of junior high school students in Nanjing [D]. Nanjing Normal University, 2015.

[3] Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Hashizume, H., Asano, K., Asano, M., Sassa, Y., ... & Kawashima, R. (2015). The impact of television viewing on brain structures: cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. Cerebral Cortex, 25(5), 1188-1197.

【4】Byeon H, Hong S (2015) Relationship between Television Viewing and Language Delay in Toddlers: Evidence from a Korea National Cross-Sectional Survey. PLOS ONE 10(3): e0120663. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0120663

Author | Tang Yicheng China Science Popularization Mental Health Promotion Center

Review | Huang Jia, Associate Researcher, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

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