Most of us probably grew up with childhood stories or fairy tales such as Cinderella, Snow White, sleeping beauty, etc. These stories were told not only to give children a sense of imagination and creativity but also to teach them morals so they could get a sense of what people go through, some of them even teach us about our culture. These stories are either very popular fairy tales told or stories passed on from generation to generation. That being said, what about the future generation? You might be thinking that obviously, we would be passing the stories we grew up with such as snow white and/or Cinderella, while that may happen, there's a possibility it won’t.
Fairy tales have been around since about 6000 years, the purpose obviously being to teach kids, but those stories back then were extremely gruesome and dark with people facing extreme consequences for doing things wrong, trying to make kids behave and that if they don’t bad things will happen. Obviously, those stories were later on replaced with more light-hearted but there are still problems in fairy tales today. With things like social media, we have started to acknowledge problems in these fairy tales. These problems such as how they are setting high standards for kids and some of them maybe are a bit stereotypical. Although I do understand those fairy tales were classic and it’s hard to come up with new ones.
There is still some potential that fairy tales still may continue in the near future. With Disney's new adaptation and live-action remake, more and more kids are introduced to these fairy tales. This helps the newer and more younger generation know about these stories we grew up with. There have even been stories out there that “change” these stories in a way, such as “The Land of Stories” that give us a new view on these tales, giving kids more creative fairy tales, with new imagination and morals. Without these fairy tales, we wouldn’t have been taught these morals and why they are important, as well as they help shape our culture.
If we’re not careful, we could lose these beloved stories, due to these problems that we find in them, but there is still a way to fix that if we “change” these classic fairy tales into something that still has aspects of the original but doesn’t include these problems. Obviously, nothing would ever be “perfect” but we should still try our best to get rid of these problems as it can reflect on how our culture and society are.