An international mentor for the World Health Organisation has raised her concern about the unrealistic portrayal of injuries and violence in children’s programmes. Dr Karen Pfeffer feels that cartoons should be given ratings like movies are to give parents the option of choosing programmes in which the characters sustain realistic injuries. In a paper that is to be published this month, Dr Karen Pfeffer notes that certain cartoons portray injuries unrealistically that could “affect children’s perceptions of risk”.
The Lincoln University senior lecturer said that she had studied the effects of television’s portrayal of risky behaviour on children and found that they tended to imitate certain ‘dangerous TV behaviours‘ and that she also found evidence of a direct relation ‘between amount of TV viewing and injury rates.’ In cartoons like Scooby-Doo, X-Men, Batman and Ben 10, the injuries sustained by the characters were found to be portrayed in the least realistic way.
Dr Pfeffer studied the prime time children’s programmes that were aired in October last year and came to a conclusion that several characters engaged themselves in risky behaviours and violence but the negative consequences were mostly not portrayed. A result of which children could perceive violence and it’s impacts differently especially if the negative consequences were not portrayed.
