When I was about seven, Spongebob Squarepants came out on Nickelodeon and I was obsessed and still am. I've probably seen every episode and when I was little, I had the little chapter books and all the school supplies. So when I came across this article about Spongebob I had to blog about it. 
This article insinuates that watching just 9 minutes of Spongebob may cause short-term attention problems as well as learning problems in children as young as four years old. The experiment was done by randomly assigning 60 children to watch either Spongebob or a slower-paced PBS show such as Calliou. Right after the 9 minutes, the children took a mental function test in which the kids who watched Spongebob performed considerably worse.
The study goes on to suggest that more immediate problems can occur after just a little exposure to fast-paced cartoons and that parents should really begin to monitor the cartoons their children watch. Most cartoons usually last around 22 minutes so it suggests that more studies need to be done to see if those results could be even worse.
There is a bit of criticism to this study. It was a small study size of only 60 children, mostly white children from middle-class or wealthy families so it is not exactly representative of all children who watch tv. Also, the kids were not tested before watching the shows, so it does not confirm if they had learning problems beforehand. In addition, Spongebob is aimed at 6-11 year olds, so 4 years old might be too young for them to watch it anyway.
I personally love Spongebob and grew up watching it. I would definitely allow my children to watch it because I don't think this study is completely legitimate. What do you guys think? Is Spongebob hazardous to kids' intelligence or is this study not representative?
Very interesting study. As you mentioned above, since this study is done with very small control group I think there is a probelm of credibility. But I hope this study is not true, since any people watch this show since they were young.
I can't buy into this study. The sample size is too small, the subjects being studied are not diverse, and the conclusions have been made after 9 minutes of programming. On top of that, none of the kids were tested before they watched TV. The study is too vague to really worry me.
I also found this study very interesting but I am not sure if it is totally valid. Like Sean said, the sample size used in this study is relatively small, the children studied were mostly of the same background, and conclusions were made after a short period of time. However, I would be interested to see if further tests are conducted and what the results are.
I think this is an interesting study but I do not believe it proves anything. I like that you pointed out the problems in the study, but I think they are too significant to be ignored. It would be interesting if someone took these studies further. But I think that at the moment these results are weak inferences, simular to the beginning of the research on smoking that we have been talking about in class.
While this study is both surprising and interesting, I believe that there are way too many factors that are unaccounted for and have not been taken into consideration. For instance, the researchers did not bother to see if any of the participants had attention disorders prior to the study. This can in turn distort the results of the study seeing as certain children already inflicted with attention disorders may have had significant trouble with the mental function test whether they watched Spongebob or not. In addition, I think that any effect of watching cartoons such as Spongebob can possibly have on a child will be a harmless temporary one. Overall, it seems as if the researches conducted an experimental study without taking the proper precautions to see if they were truly on to something. Here is a video from Fox News where they speak a bit more about the topic, but notice the man says that there are some instances where the kids who didn't watch Spongebob did worse on the mental function test:
http://www.fox59.com/videobeta/?watchId=93e6b245-eed1-4c73-9ebb-3511e114bff1
I think its just a coincidence that kids with short attention spans watch Spongebob. There's plenty of other factors that could be causing the effects such as television in general. But it is very interesting none the less.