kills brain cells, I needed to do some research.
Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville recruited 60 4-year-old children for an experiment. They wanted to compare the instant influence of fast-paced and slow-paced TV shows on children's problem-solving skills, gratification-delaying skills, and attention spans. This group of cognitive skills is collectively known as executive function.
20 toddlers were assigned to watch 9 minutes of a Spongebob clip. Another 20 were assigned to watch 9 minutes of Caillou, a cartoon that is about the everyday life a 4-year-old child. The last 20 were assigned to draw and sketch whatever they wanted for 9 minutes.
After those tests, Lillard and Peterson asked the toddlers to perform several tasks, such as learning to touch their toes when told to touch their head and reciting a strand of numbers in reverse. The results? They found that the kids who watched Caillou or sketched did exceptionally better on every task than those who watched Spongebob.
Now, these tests only proved that watching Spongebob drains attention. The Los Angeles Times takes this information out of proportion by claiming that watching Spongebob makes kids dumber.
"Saying that Spongebob is making you dumber is very different than saying a child's attention is temporarily impaired and that we don't know what the long-term impacts are," says Lillard.
Toddlers watching Spongebob must use a lot of mental resources to try to fathom exactly what is happening in the fast-paced cartoon, while toddlers watching Caillou are allowed more time to process what is happening. This means that watching Spongebob before a test may not be the best idea, but it certainly does not mean that watching Spongebob makes kids dumber.
In conclusion, Spongebob does not kill brain cells, and no, mayonnaise is not an instrument.
