BOOB TUBE BABIES

Fairfield Daily Republic Sep 14, 2011
‘SpongeBob’ isn’t best option for toddlers
By Kelvin Wade

I’m always looking for ways we can improve kids’ ability to learn. A study led by University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lilliard that appeared in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ magazine recently found that 4-year-olds watching Nickelodeon’s popular show “SpongeBob SquarePants” did significantly worse on tasks afterward than children who watched slower-paced programming.

This is not shocking. I wouldn’t need to conduct a study to find out that if I let my 6-year-old grandson Vika watch “SpongeBob,” with its bright colors and fast pacing and then sat him down to work on schoolwork, it would be a disaster. He wouldn’t want to sit still.

In the study, kids who played with crayons or watched the slower-paced PBS children’s show “Caillou” did better on tasks immediately afterward. This wouldn’t surprise anyone who has seen the show. I don’t know how a kid could stay awake without smelling salts watching “Caillou,” a balloon-headed Charlie Brown look-alike who doesn’t do very much over the course of a half-hour. So perhaps kids watching the show did better at schoolwork because they’d had a good nap.

Nickelodeon blasted the study, saying the kids involved weren’t diverse (the study consisted of 60 white 4-year-olds) and that Spongebob is aimed at 6- to 11-year-olds. But they needn’t protest. Any fast-paced cartoon is going to rile up children and make them less likely to focus on schoolwork.

If you sat a bunch of 4-year-olds down and showed them the Three Stooges, WWE wrestling or Tom and Jerry and then asked them to sit still afterward, you’re fighting a losing battle. Expect a lot of wrestling around, a lamp being broken and eventually someone crying and telling on the rest of them.

When you stimulate kids, they get stimulated. Duh. Any parent knows this. You wouldn’t want a child to watch some fast-paced, action-packed show right before going to bed. They’ll be jumping on the bed.

A more important study would be one that asked if educational programs such as “Sesame Street” actually improved children’s attention span or learning. A better study would compare students who watched television vs. children who read books.

Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, with the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, wrote a commentary in the same issue of Pediatrics on this subject. He wrote that in 1970 most kids started watching television at 4 and watched four hours of TV a day. Today, most kids start watching television at 4 months and watch an average of 8 hours a day. He argues that the fast pace of most children’s program contributes to their lack of attention span and their lack of persistence when working on tasks.

What’s the long-term impact of this generation watching TV four years earlier than my generation? What’s the impact of watching twice as much television?

It’s no wonder too many of today’s kids don’t want to take the time to read anything longer than a text, email or Facebook update.

The big headline on this study this past week was that SpongeBob makes kids stupid. But if you take away nothing else from this, then keep this in mind: SpongeBob isn’t making your child stupid. If you’re letting your child watch SpongeBob and other mindless shows for hours a day, you are. Peace.