As I sit here flipping through my digital cable channels, I can’t help but wonder what happened to television. Back in the 1980s, when I was a kid, the best shows to watch were on after school was out and on Saturday mornings. The rest of the time we spent time outside playing and pretending to be our television heroes such as the Transformers, G.I. Joe and the various superheroes we watched such as Superman and Batman.

Back then, the shows we watched were fun and entertaining. They were shows both adults and children would enjoy. These are what I like to refer to as the ‘timeless classics’. Our cartoons included the Smurfs, Garfield, Transformers, the Wuzzles, the Pound Puppies, Bobby’s World, Thundercats, He-Man and She-Ra, and the list goes on. Today, I don’t see the same kind of shows and it is quite disappointing to see exactly what my child wants to watch each day.

While I admit I enjoy watching the occasional episode of Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon with my son, I just don’t feel most of the cartoons today have the same values they did back when I was a kid. In most shows, such as the Smurfs, you learned a valuable lesson that could be applied to life. In the rest of the shows, you learned about good and evil. You learned how it never pays to be a bad person by watching He-Man, the Transformers, Thundercats, and G.I. Joe.

Today, cartoons are filled with stupid humor, ways to teach children how to behave badly, and ideas to make children think they are invincible. In the age of technology, I can’t help but think children are becoming less intelligent especially in terms of how much common sense they seem to have. This is why these types of shows are so dangerous for them to watch.

Girls watch things like the Bratz movie and think they can dress in skimpy outfits. Boys watch cartoons and think they can get one over on Mom and Dad by acting like their favorite cartoon character. Where are the moral values they used to sneak in our cartoons, because I’m just not seeing them?

On one particular cartoon, which I no longer let my son watch, there was a competition between the boys and girls. The girls would make themselves look attractive to woo the boys only to double cross them and win. I was appalled and contacted the network the show was on. This was not only a show that I found to be degrading to females, but it also taught girls they could use their body and good looks to make men do what they wanted. That is hardly a lesson I want my children to learn, especially before they even become teenagers.

So, what happened to cartoons? You’d think in a time when everyone is so quick to point out how harmful things are to children, parents would not let their kids watch and act like Bratz, Ed, Edd, & Eddy (which is filled with bad behavior, plans you don’t want your children emulating, and a major lack of hygiene), and Code Lyoko, but they do. Sure there are some nice educational shows on PBS and Nick Jr., but with my son now too old for these shows, there has to be something better that he can watch on television.

Luckily, DVD Box Sets of my favorite childhood cartoons are being released. At least he’ll get to see those and hopefully he’ll learn from those instead of the junk that’s on cable television these days. Of course, I also believe too much television is bad for children, so when nothing worthwhile is on, I’m just as likely to send him outside for some quality time playing and using his imagination.

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