I tend to go with the hunch that these entertainments are actually helping to prepare kids for a world that increasingly moves at the speed of thought. It took off with “SpongeBob” (and the rise of Cartoon Network), and you can see it in shows like “The Loud House,” “Big City Greens,” and the great “Apple & Onion.” The “Lego” movies totally have that caffeinated pace and Mad-magazine-for-preteens sarcastic snap. The manic pinwheel mode of children’s entertainment is everywhere now. The study had other weaknesses (maybe you shouldn’t take a test when your brain is still buzzing from a hyperactive cartoon), but the concern at its heart was one that any parent, including this one, might have shared: How is an entertainment world of lickety-split, spit-in-your-eye cartoon comedy going to affect kids’ brains?
My first reaction to that study was: Who would show “SpongeBob SquarePants” to a 4-year-old? It was designed for an older bracket (starting at 6), and those ages mean something. And the speed, the snark rhythm of it, is everything.Ī decade ago, the media jumped all over a 2011 study in Pediatrics magazine that found that 4-year-olds, just after watching a fast-break episode of “SpongeBob SquarePants,” did worse on tests of attention and problem-solving than kids who watched a slower-paced program. The characters in “Sponge on the Run” say what they mean, nudging their thoughts to acerbic extremes (“This is about friends! And friends don’t let friends become somebody else’s face cream!”), only to snap back to their (mostly) amiable selves.