First Draft

Mickey Mouse, Spongebob Squarepants, Elmo are some of our childhood heroes, cartoon characters that have accompanied us through our earliest times. It would be hard to find someone that haven't seen a cartoon as a toddler. Nowadays, due to a diverse amount of cartoons for various age groups, people are becoming pessimistic towards children watching cartoons. But compared to the growing prejudice that cartoons are harmful to young children, cartoons are not detrimental to the developing brains of children.

Everybody knows that cartoons are a big part of children's delight. Cartoons refer to "TV programs and short films for children featuring anthropomorphized animals, superheroes , the adventures of child protagonists and related genres (Wikipedia)". Aside from this theoretical definition, people all have watched cartoons once or twice during their childhood and might even recall the joy and hapiness brought by favorite characters and new episodes.

Educational cartoons are great ways of teaching young kids manners and common sense. By watching educational cartoon films Infants and toddlers start improving Vocabulary and Learn new languages, learning different words, objects and their meanings. Also, they can improve overall cognitive knowledge among young children more readily, from watching these cartoon films as compared to their teacher and books .
Many different worlds and characters enhance imagination and creativity By watching cartoon films, children become more creative. They try to do things in different ways. so their imagination and creativity is enhanced. There is also evidence in the literature that children’s imaginative play can be positively affected by television content.  
Watching cartoons during the earlier part of child hood brings brain development. Head neurobiologist at Hasbro, who seems the most qualified to speak on this matter, said that, "Educational cartoons such as 'My Little Pony provide' your children with the necessary stimulus material to understand language." The brain is known to form language by exposure to material containing the language in question. Studies have also shown that colors contained in children's cartoons stimulate areas of the visual cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for processing visual information and is plastic. This makes their body make the area of the brain grow larger, which is important as the brain only grows in childhood.

Cartoons provide both the linguistic and visual stimulation necessary for  children to survive in the digital world. Additionally, the fictional environment trains kid's brains to understand fictional metaphors, such as the disconnect between video game violence and real violence.

 "One of the, possible, explanatory effects is that cartoons (with, at times, nonsensical words/sounds) match those of babies. Much more importantly, babies get to see what's happening when you sit them in front of the TV for, say, 6 hours a day." Watching cartoons like this will help coordinate the sensorimotor parts of their brains. These cartoons engage the brain's motor and speech areas in such a way that they develop together.

 "Watching at least 3 hours TV daily has been proven to lead to higher arousal in the amygdala. This in combination with the further development of the language areas makes it possible to develop a more holistic picture of the world within that interdisciplinary sphere." During research I have found people mention that watching TV in the early childhood years is a trade-off between gaining additional sensorimotor intelligence and impairing one's emotional intelligence. But as it is stated above, it has already been explained that the risen amygdala activity (the brain's emotion center) has been brought by watching cartoons on TV. So it is now clear, that there are only advantages to watching a lot of cartoons.

 There has been a study about the famous 'Spongebob' and its effects on young kids led by University of Virginia psychologist Angeline Lillard. Researchers randomly assigned 60 four-year-olds to three activities for nine minutes: drawing with markers, watching a slow-paced, PBS cartoon, or watching SpongeBob SquarePants. Researchers said that they chose SpongeBob for the show switches scenes on average every 11 seconds, as compared with the PBS cartoon, which switched only twice a minute.

Afterward the preschoolers were asked to do four different tasks that test cognitive capability and impulse control, such as counting backwards, and solving puzzles. Compared with those who were drawing and those watching PBS, the SpongeBob kids performed significantly worse on the tasks.

 

Nickleodeon, the makers of SpongeBob, defended the cartoon, pointing out that the study looked only at white middle- to upper-class kids. The study subjects were also only four, two years younger than the target SpongeBob audience.

"Having 60 non-diverse kids, who are not part of the show's targeted demo, watch nine minutes of programming is questionable methodology. It could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust," said David Bittler, a representative for Nickleodeon.

Those on the other side of the debate argue that all this multi-tasking is preparing kids for the internet-driven world they were born into, teaching them how to handle media in the way that many in the world today have had to train themselves to do.

A contradicting study in Tailand presented 2D cartoons to a sample of 200 students from 4 primary schools in Thailand. After the animation presentation, the researcher observed the response, questionnaire, interviewed and evaluated feedback in questionnaires. There is a sign or trend that children’s aggressiveness in mind decreased in short term, and has the potential to be changed in long term. From this we can see that studies vary in results and that it is not a reliable evidence to consider cartoons harmful to kids.

Kids everywhere watch cartoons. It would be a waste of emotion if people were to worry about the detrimental effects of cartoons because there is really no such thing. Cartoons are kid's main way of entertainment and is a beneficial aid in developing young brains when they lack stimuli from the outer world. As the phase of language and visual development of  the brain is getting the help of cartoons, accepting cartoons as effective tools of education and not dangerous shows that make kids dumb would bring happiness to parents and children alike.