Watching SpongeBob Squarepants Makes Preschoolers Slower Thinkers, Study Finds

I am not surprised about this information. I don't think it is just Spongebob. I think any hand held game, or computer games, has the same affects as well. I am saddened that Nickoledeon's only response is that Spongebob is not designed for 4 year olds but for 6 year olds.  They are missing the whole point

He may be one of the longest-running, best-loved cartoons in Nickelodeon history, but SpongeBob SquarePants is getting no love from child psychologists.

According to research published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, watching fast-paced cartoons like SpongeBob, even for just a few minutes, hinders abstract thinking, short-term memory and impulse control in preschoolers.

Led by University of Virginia psychologist Angeline Lillard, researchers randomly assigned 60 four-year-olds to three activities: drawing freely with markers for nine minutes; watching a slower-paced, PBS cartoon for that time; or watching SpongeBob SquarePants. Researchers chose SpongeBob for its frenetic pace: The show switches scenes on average every 11 seconds, as compared with the PBS cartoon, which switched only twice a minute.

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