Is Spongebob Squarepants Bad for Children?

Is SpongeBob SquarePants Bad for Children?

"Is SpongeBob SquarePants Bad for Children?" This article written by Roni Caryn Rabin Is about the affect that certain T.V cartoon such as SpongeBob SquarePants has on the thought process of children. SpongeBob SquarePants is a funny animated television series shown on Nickelodeon. Most series focus on the exploits and adventures of a little, yellow sponge character and his various friends in the under water city of "Bikini Bottom." According this article, a new research on children shows that compare to younger children who watches educational program or spends time drawing, children at an age of 4 that follow this animated series do worst on attention and problem solving tests.

In this article, the researchers carried out "children's executive function test" that looks at the attention and short-term memory of 60 children who were reported to watch similar level of television. These children were randomly assigned to 3 groups. Researchers had one group watched 9 minute of SpongeBob; one group watched an educational program and the last group did drawing. And as result, the group that watched 9 minute of the cartoon was "operating at half the capacity compare to other children." According to some of the researchers, this result, which does not only imply to SpongeBob SquarePants, is due to the fact that a lot of unreal things that take place in the cartoons are hard for children's brain to process and as result disturbing their process of thinking and leaving them exhausted after trying to process all these unreal scenes happening in the cartoons.

According to books, Phycology is all about studying the human mind and how it functions, especially finding the reason why people are they way they are or why they act the way they do. This same type of study is being carried out by researchers mention in the article, "is SpongeBob SquarePants Bad for Children?" The researchers mentioned in this article are looking at executive function of children that watch animated series compare to children that watch educational programs or perform drawing. In another word, these researchers are studying the brain function of children when submitted to different activities and how these children operate in response to these activities. This is exactly what psychology is about. As result, we can say that this article is definitely psychology related.

As a sister of a 4 years old boy who happens to love watching animated series, especially SpongeBob SquarePants, I find this article really interesting. I definitely agree with the fact that these types of animations disturb the thinking process of children. Just like the article mentioned, it is hard for children like my little brother to process some scenes while watching the animation. He wonders how it is possible

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