SpongeBob SquarePants should be packing up his underwater pineapple house just about now and heading for the unemployment line. So should Tom and Jerry and all those other cartoon characters that chase each other around from place to place with little, if any, dialogue or probing ethical dilemmas. A study published today in the journal Pediatrics indicates that fast-paced cartoon shows have a negative impact -- at least temporarily -- on the brain’s ability to perform higher level functions like problem solving and smart decision-making.
I’m wondering how parents will react to the study, but many may be moved to switch channels or turn the TV off altogether after hearing the results. Researchers from the University of Virginia randomly assigned 60 4-year-olds to either watch SpongeBob SquarePants, watch a slower-paced PBS show for preschoolers, or draw with crayons for nine minutes; the researchers then gave them psychological tests to measure their expression of creativity, ability to problem solve, and level of self control and found that the kids who watched SpongeBob scored significantly worse in all three categories than those who drew or watched the PBS educational show.
Those conducting the psychological tests didn’t know which activity group the children had been assigned to before the test, and the children in the three different groups didn’t differ in how much television and what types of programs they normally watched. They all had equal attention spans at the beginning of the study, and the researchers think the small measured effect was only temporary.
Nevertheless, “this result is consistent with others showing long-term negative associations between entertainment television and attention,” write the study authors. “Given the popularity of some fast-paced television cartoons among young children, it is important that parents are alert to the possibility of lower levels of executive function in young children at least immediately after watching such shows.”
That doesn’t bode well for poor SpongeBob, that, as of this morning, was one of Nickelodeon’s highest rated shows.
“Simply put, television is both good and bad: there are good programs and bad ones,” wrote Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis , a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Research Institute in an editorial that accompanied the study. “And, what makes programs good or bad has to do not only with the content itself” but with the pacing.
Some rapidly-paced shows, like SpongeBob, change scenes more than three times a minute, which researchers hypothesize could overstimulate the brain. “When the brain requires a lot of attention to figure out what’s going on in the fast-moving action, it doesn’t engage in higher thinking functions,” explained Dr. Michael Rich, director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston who was not involved with the study.
It does tap into those function when drawing a free-form picture or listening to Mr. Rodgers discuss the death of a beloved pet. But when faced with action competing with an explanation of global warming -- in the SpongeBob clip above -- the brain will follow the action rather than the explanation.
“The take home message here is that what kids watch matters as much or more than how long they’re watching,” Rich said. Parents should make an effort to give their kids a nutritious media diet that’s mainly composed of wholesome educational shows, preferably that they watch along with their child.
Like chocolate bars and ice cream, fast-action “junk food” programs don’t need to be banned, Rich said, but they should be a smaller part of this media diet since they appear to -- at least temporarily -- do the brain more harm than good.
Deborah Kotz can be reached at dkotz@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @debkotz2.
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