Fast-Paced Cartoons Like SpongeBob May Harm Children’s Brains

Children who watch fast-paced cartoons like SpongeBob SquarePants perform worse when asked to follow rules or delay gratification than kids who spend time drawing or watching slower, educational programs, a study found.

The 4-year-old children who watched nine minutes of SpongeBob on Viacom Inc.’s Nickelodeon channel performed only half as well on tasks as those who spent the same amount of time drawing or watching Caillou, a Public Broadcasting Service educational program about a 4-year-old boy, said Angeline Lillard, lead author of the study in the journal Pediatrics. Programs that are fast paced and feature unrealistic events may over-stimulate the brain, making it harder to trigger executive function, a process used to complete tasks, Lillard said. Children may also mimic the characters after the show ends and not concentrate. Parents need to consider how frenetic a show is, as well as its content, when deciding what their young children watch, she said.