TV cartoon has been one the most watched genre among children. The present study was conducted to investigate how children watch cartoon in the family context and how they use TV socially. By utilizing ethnographic method, there were 9 families observed in total in 1997. The research concluded that unlike other types of TV programs watching, children usually have full attention to cartoon during the viewing processes. Parents tend to ignore the impact of cartoon viewing and pose little intervention. In general, children were not quite capable of decoding the connotation and denotation of the TV text, which leads to the suggestions that the need for media literacy. Strategies and steps of media literacy education were also elaborated in the article.