Spongebob Squarepants, a very popular animated series among kids, may actually bad for children who who are below six years old. This is according to a study done by the Psychology Department of the University of Virginia.
The study says, the cartoon show can impair a child’s memory, attention span and problem solving skills — which are essential for doing well at school. Kids apparently develop a harder time with decision making and the effects of watching a program such as this, are felt overtime and can be long term,
According to the psychologists who did the research:
“Connecting fast-paced television viewing to deficits in executive function … has profound impacts for children’s cognitive and social development that need to be considered and reacted to”
The methodology of the research was done, as follows:
To test what those might be, Lillard and Peterson randomly assigned 60 4-year-olds to three groups: one that watched nine minutes of a fast-paced, “very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea;” one that watched nine minutes of slower-paced programming from a PBS show “about a typical U.S. preschool-aged boy;” and a third group that was asked to draw for nine minutes with markers and crayons.
Immediately after their viewing and drawing tasks were complete, the kids were asked to perform four tests to assess executive function. Unfortunately for the denizens of Bikini Bottom, the kids who watched nine minutes of the frenetic high jinks of the “animated sponge” scored significantly worse than the other kids.
The show airs on the Nickelodeon channel and for the cable TV’s part, they have noted that Spongebob’s target audience is actually kids 6 years old to 11 years old. The cartoons was never meant to be watched by pre-schoolers.
