Monday, September 12, 2011

This Just In--SpongeBob SquarePants Harmful to Moppets' Brains

I dunno. My kid went through a prolonged SpongeBob phase, and it doesn't seem to have done him any harm. That said--
Breaking news from 1999: Scientists have discovered that SpongeBob SquarePants — a well-dressed undersea schizophrenic who works as a fry cook at the Krusty Krab — is bad for your children. So say a group of well-trained researchers at the University of Virginia, who published their findings in the journal Pediatrics. The study measured “executive function” — the ability to stay on one task without being distracted — in preschool-aged children.
As I said, it didn't hurt my kid. In fact, at the same time that he was captivated by SpongeBob--a sort of antic, animated, invertebrate Groucho Marx--he would spend hours building stuff out of LEGO (things from a kit; things he created). Then again, SpongeBob did do awful things to my brain: It drove me crazy and affected my ability to stay on one task (specifically, that of watching a Sponge Bob 'toon) without being distracted.

1 comment:

@ Garrendenny said...

Ha! But you did watch it! Spongebob is captivating, and a damn site better conceived and executed than the sad sack cartoons of the '70's. Scooby Doo? He Man? My kids watch a lot of the Bob, even naming a teddy bear 'beary'. What is scarey though is that i recently started calling a bolt on a swather 'Bolty'!