The History and Development of Cartoons

Cartoons are animated motion pictures that depict a story, and their main audience is young kids. Throughout time, these animated images have changed and have influenced the way children think and perceive the world. Nevertheless, those changes may not always be beneficial. Cartoons began as innocent drawings that had a never-ending story and would only have the main purpose of entertaining children. The first cartoon was created in 1928 and it depicted the story of a mouse, nowadays known as Mickey Mouse. As time has progressed, new cartoons have developed and they content that they contain has also changed dramatically. Nowadays, cartoons often display content that back in the 1990’s was not suitable for children, and parent would be very careful on monitoring their children. Among the creation of new cartoons, technology has also been developed which provides an easier pathway for children to access them.

For instance, the cartoons of the 1990s used to be something that every kid was anxious to see every Saturday morning. As a kid, watching in television your favorite cartoon was a plus, the real challenges were to wake up before your parents or your siblings and to survive without food until mom did breakfast. Dressing as your favorite hero and fight the crime was one of the greatest moments a kid from this time will have. Those were adventures that children had to do before watching a cartoon television series. These cartoons were inspiring for the children, like snoopy said, “Be yourself. No one can say you’re doing it wrong.” or Bugs Bunny “Eh, what’s up doc?”. The cartoons of the 90’s did not have an ending to the story and continuously left children entertained and inspired for more viewings and making their imagination work to know what was going to happen on the next episode. Girls, singing with their favorite princess and thinking that a simple frog could become their prince, playing if they have a tea party and inviting all their friends, involving all the family members, mom, dad, and even siblings. Nevertheless, new cartoons (2000-2010) can be much more dangerous than any other experience a child could witness. It could contain topics that would confuse the child with his experiences in real life, and even they can contain directions that contradict the parent’s orders.

The new generations think that old cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry, Snoopy, and Popeye have bad images or graphics, the story is too short, and the context is boring. Now children are not interested in the cartoons, children have an easy way to watch cartoons, they just wake up on turn the television that is in their room, those adventures are getting lost. Children nowadays do not need to fight for the television or if someone is watching the television they just turn on their cellphones or any electronic devices and watched cartoons. All this new technology that children are exposed to, can affect their education, having all those devices in hand, will let the children have less focus in school and make their grades drop.

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