Cartoons Influence towards Violence and Aggression in School Age Children in Nigeria

ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to explore how violence and aggression in cartoon affects school age children in Nigeria. The reason for embarking on this research is to know whether and to what extent cartoon on television makes school age children (both male and female) violent and aggressive. Children are exposed to cartoon at their tender age (4-12). Though it serves as a means of entertainment to them, children learn faster than adults, and their re-enactment of media messages is unrivalled. Since most children programmes are presented in entertainment form especially cartoons, it is important to measure the amount of influence these cartoons have on children. Consequently, this study is motivated by children’s reaction to the violent contents in the programmes they watch. This study sets out to explore the children attitudes towards cartoons among Nigerian children in Saint International Nursery and Primary School and Apostolic Church Grammar School in 2013 and 2014 academic year spring term. The study seeks to explore whether or not cartoon violence and aggression affect the children in a long period. Also, this study sets out to investigate whether there is statistically significant difference between the children’s attitudes. In this present study, data have been collected through a questionnaire comprising of two sections. In the first section of the questionnaire 20 questions are asked in order to collect data about demographic information of the children and information about their cartoon uses. The second part of the questionnaire is designed according to the 5 point Likert scale and sought to measure children’s attitudes towards cartoon use and addiction. Also, in order to explore whether statistically any significance there is between the responses of the children, chi-square test is run. The findings of the study indicate that there is statistically significant difference between the responses of the school age children in some topics. However, no addictive behaviour has been detected with respect to cartoon use. The most important finding is that female children tend to be more violent and aggressive than the male children in Nigerian Results point out that, female children should be more monitored. Keywords: Aggressiveness, Cartoon, Children, Gender and Violence. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………