When I was in elementary school, one of the best parts of my day was coming home from school, throwing myself on the couch, and watching kids’ TV. The children’s programs of the early and mid-2000s were significant sources of entertainment for every modern teenager, parts of our childhood that we now look upon with nostalgia. The Lizzie McGuire Show, Drake and Josh, and That’s So Raven were all favorites of every 2000s kid. So what has happened to children’s television in the past decade? Shows like Shake it Up! and Dog With a Blog make me positively cringe. What ever happened to the classic shows that were actually funny and creative?

First of all, one of the biggest issues with children’s television today is that the comedy is played much safer. The kids’ shows of the 2000s were often successful because they had jokes for both the kids and the adults, and very few shows today have that same element. Particularly on the Disney Channel, the comedy comes off as sterile and bland. Why is it that movies targeted toward families—such as the recent hit, The Lego Movie, which has boasted an impressive 97 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes—can appeal to both kids and their parents, yet today’s television programs struggle to do the same?

I’m sure some could argue that the quality of the comedy hasn’t changed, but as we have grown older, we have become more aware of the poor quality. But even today, when I catch reruns of Drake and Josh every now and then, I still laugh just as much as I did when I was a kid.

But one of my biggest issues with children’s shows is how blatantly formulaic they have become. The cast of Disney Channel show Jessie, for example, is a mess of (often offensive) stereotypes. There’s the smart Indian boy, the dumb blonde girl, the spunky skater kid, and so on and so forth. KJ Dell’Antonia, a blogger on family issues for The New York Times, recently took note of the mindless stereotyping on this show, “which seems carefully calculated to produce maximum head-slapping moments among adoptive parents”(February 27, 2014). Not only do these stereotypes enforce societal generalizations that suppress acceptance of individuality, they also come across as hard to relate to.

Hilary Duff of The Lizzie McGuire Show was my childhood idol. Like me, Lizzie was a little clumsy and awkward, but kindhearted and intelligent. Most importantly, Lizzie was an absolute individual and a good role model. I don’t see any of those kinds of traits in the children portrayed today. The girls on Shake it Up! wear clothes way more extravagant than what any typical American “tween “ would wear today. Whenever the two main characters, Rocky and CeCe, come on screen, I find myself blinded by their excessive sequins. These girls come across as shallow, superficial, and just plain fake. There isn’t anything real to be found in children’s TV.

Not only do the characters seem completely artificial, but they are also disrespectful and catty. As noted by entertainment writer Nick Schager in an article for LA Weekly last June, “In each of these programs, everyone is endlessly ridiculing everyone else in order to showcase their own playful impudence, thereby equating coolness with smart-assery.” This observation couldn’t be truer. The so-called “friends” portrayed on these programs do nothing but put down each other in an attempt to come across as the wittiest or the sassiest, painting a terribly inaccurate picture of what genuine friendship is.

The portrayal of friendship seems to be a common issue for kids’ TV. Just recently, my younger sister was watching the newer Disney program I Didn’t Do It, which, according to the Disney Channel media description, “follows fraternal twin sister and brother Lindy and Logan Watson and their three best friends as they take on their freshman year of high school together.”

Well doesn’t that sound nice? I found the show to be anything but the heartwarming tales of a group of best friends. The episode my sister was watching saw the exclusionary group making a new friend, who then turns out to be a bit more eccentric than they, though not fitting in with their tightly knit clique. The group of friends then decided to plot how to get rid of their so-called new “friend.”

These exclusionary attitudes are disgusting. While there’s nothing wrong with not liking a person as much as you get to know them, the disrespectful and immature attitudes the characters display in reaction to the situation are completely out of line.

Cleary, children’s television has had some issues with the types of messages they present. Over the past few years, there have been a number of controversies over supposed “jokes” in these programs. Sophomore Taylor Meyers notes, “Shows like That’s So Raven talked about how all types of bodies were perfect, while Shake it Up! is making jokes about models not eating!” It’s astounding that the writers behind shows like Shake it Up! think that these messages are appropriate for easily impressionable kids. What ever happened to the wholesome lessons about family and friendships? As Taylor further laments, “There’s no message, there’s no educational value, there’s nothing to be taken away from it…it’s just mindless.”

It seems that the root of the problems with children’s television is the decreased amount of effort put into them. Many of these shows lack the creativity and positive messages teens associate with 2000s TV shows. Nothing distinguishes the kids’ programs today. The majority of them are hopelessly unfunny, following the same dull formula. While the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have certainly made quite a bit of money from these programs, the heart and morals that today’s teenagers associate with older shows is absent.

What truly aggravates me about this situation is that Disney and Nickelodeon seem to not care that they are putting out garbage. After all, kids will watch anything, whether it’s good or bad, right?

If children’s media industries want to be successful, earning both money and critical acclaim, then it’s time to start putting in more effort. Children can be heavily influenced by what they watch, a fact that seems to go right over the heads of the executives who sign off on today’s shows. As college student and English major Joely Friedman wrote last February in a blog for The Huffington Post (“Are Kid Shows Really for Kids Anymore?”), “Something radical needs to change here, or else kids 10 years from now will be growing up watching shows that teach them how to act 20 before they are even 10.”