Stereotypes Of Socializing Children

The media is extremely influential in socializing people at any age. Older people are generally influenced by media through the news and tabloids. However, children are socialized through television shows and cartoons. The shows and the advertisements shown during the commercial breaks are an important part of socializing the child because they will watch so much television in their spare time.
I watched two different cartoons on Cartoon Network to see how children are socialized through cartoons. The first one was called Teen Titans Go. In this cartoon, I noticed many stereotypes. The first was how the girl characters, such as Starfire and Raven, had long, shiny hair and the boy characters, such as Beast Boy, Robin, and Cyborg, had short hair. This is teaching children the specific haircuts they must have according to their gender. Another stereotype I noticed was how the girl …show more content…
This show was interesting because it enforced stereotypes and broke them at the same time. Two characters that enforced stereotypes were two of the children. One, the boy, was the color blue and the other, the girl, was the color pink. This tells children that boys have to have blue and girls have to have pink. This has been a stereotype for many years and has been a hard one to break. However, the children’s parents broke this same stereotype. Their mother was blue, which is associated with boys, and their father was pink, which is associated with girls. This helped allow children to see that colors are not gender specific and anyone can like whatever color they want. I also noticed in this cartoon that the girls wore dresses and frilly clothes and the boys wore pants and ties. This, again, tells children what they should or should not wear according to their gender. Even though, many little girls and females of all ages wear pants and shorts in real life, the cartoons do not depict the girl characters wearing