Cartoon fuss highlights lack of rating system

A MICKEY MOUSE look-alike is hit by a car when crossing the road and lies in a pool of blood. A character that looks like Princess Elsa, a figure in the animated movie Frozen, is given a throat operation that involves bloody scenes. Recently, some companies have been producing such bloody scenes based on familiar characters and spreading them among children. Southern Metropolis Daily comments:

After the bloody reworked cartoons were reported by domestic media outlets, several main video-sharing websites such as youku.com and v.qq.com said they had banned them.

Yet that incident should remind us of a new risk, namely that improper information might be hidden in cultural products for children. For a long time, people have associated cartoons with children considering them to be specially made for kids.

However, two trends have changed this. First, with the rise of domestic animation companies, more of them are producing their own cartoons, the content of which might be hard to control. Second, those born in the 1980s have already reached their 30s, and as adults many are still fond of animated movies. So some animations in the market are made for them, not for children.

That in turn calls for a classification system for cartoons nationwide, which should make clear which cartoon movies are fit for audiences under the age of 18 and which are not.

Actually, not only cartoon movies, but also other cultural products such as movies and TV series should be classified. Modern technology enables video websites to push differentiated content to different user groups. As a result, a classification system is necessary to prevent children watching unsuitable videos.

The unsuitable cartoons should also be a reminder to parents that they should monitor what their children access via the internet. It is the duty of parents to learn more about their children, read books to them and play with them, instead of simply letting them watch cartoon movies on smartphones or tablets. Only in this way will children be protected from unsuitable material online.