Chapter One 1.1 Backgrounds To The Study
Chapter One 1.1 Backgrounds To The Study
Chapter One 1.1 Backgrounds To The Study
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Backgrounds to the Study
Television has become a significant social phenomenon in Nigeria
and all over the world. Television viewing is generally believed to generate
social force of undeniable influence on both the adult and the younger
once. It is assumed to be the most popular entertainment mass media for
children and women. It is this selection of daily programmes, which gets
full attention of the viewers. One might says, whatever impacts television
is able to inculcate, it is because of various plays, cartoons, films and
musical shows e.t.c. which are telecasted everyday, (Zubari, 1992).
There is lot of television programmes designed for viewing pleasure
of their target audience. Some are tailored towards children, women,
adult and many more. This could carry different title such as family
health. You and the law, today’s women, children arena, political talk,
musical, T.V drama, cartoons, let’s go farming and many more.
However, for the purpose of the research, attention will be on the
effect of television cartoon network on the socialization of children.
A cartoon is any of several forms of art with varied meanings that
evolved from one to another.
Cartoon networks are a main source of entertainment for children.
Children keenly observe what cartoon is on air on cartoon network.
Because of this channel, we can see barren play grounds, children
sloppy attitude towards studies. They have no time for the healthy
activities.
Children watch cartoons which are understandable in terms of
language. Nigeria children therefore prefer to watch English version
cartoons because English language has been adopted as a linguafranca.
When children see cartoons in easy and understandable language, they
enjoy more and are involved more.
Elementary school age ( five to eleven) is considered a critical
period for understanding the effects of television cartoons on
socialization and behaviour of children. At this stage, children develop
the attention span and cognitive ability to follow continuous plots and
recognize motivations and consequences to characters actions. At this
age children’s learning ability is faster than adults (cited at: www. Media.
Awareness. com).
A number of early studies revealed negative relationship between
amount of viewing and measures of their mental ability or aptitude,
Schramn et al .(1961)found that students with “ high mental ability”
watched more television than these with low mental ability, until ages
10-14: at this point, the low mental students begin watching less and
less.