Creators of Children’s Shows Need to Be More Mindful of Mental Health When It Comes to Hidden Messages

It’s recently come to my attention that many popular kids shows and cartoons are showing examples of suicide after harsh things have happened in the characters lives. I find this simply unacceptable.

Cartoons are a part of childhood. We all have sat two feet away from the television all wound up and excited that the newest episode of Sponge Bob was about to turn on and we just had to watch. However, were we even close to aware of what messages were being subconsciously sent to us? Of course we weren’t, we were just children.

It’s common for animators to throw in little hints at sex jokes and other adult things because they know parents are going to have to sit and watch with the kids and they want to make sure everyone is entertained. That’s how they’ll get the most views. Hints at things like that just fly over children’s heads, in one ear and out the next.

There has to be some kind of boundary though, and I think they just crossed it.

Whether you are a two year old male or an 105 year old woman, suicide should not be an answer. All life is so valuable and beautiful, why would you want to throw away what you could have over something that could be resolved?

Now if you’ve read this far into the article and you are confused, let me enlighten the situation with a few examples. There is an episode in the show “SpongeBob SquarePants,”  where the character Squidward hangs a rope from his ceiling and says some thing along the lines of “I can’t seem to get happy, maybe this will help.” Yeah, I know. And it doesn’t stop there. Many, many, many cartoons have put things like this in it. Another example is when Daisy Duck is upset because her boyfriend, Donald Duck, breaks up with her. She cries and holds a gun to her head with a noose in the background, poison on the table along with a knife and several other harming objects.

So here’s a question that’s just floating around in my mind: “How many people has this affected? And how many people could have lived a successful, fun, and meaningful life but were stopped because “Daisy Duck did it, so why not?”

This has to be solved, but how? I could sit here and tell you what we needed to do and how we needed to do it and when it needed to be done. Then, you could scroll down and read a more interesting article about last night’s game. But why should I waste my time like that, giving you ideas that aren’t going to intrigue you to accomplish the long-term goal of decreasing suicide and increasing happiness when I could ask you?

So how can we stop kids from thinking about killing themselves would make all of their problems go away? Whether the idea is going to work or not, well now that’s up to you.