Blame it on Spongebob

Cartoons – good or bad for children? I have no idea, but one thing’s for sure: they certainly know how to drum up instant international media controversy.

Take Spongebob Squarepants, for instance. Invented by marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg in the late 1980s, this colourful and hyperactive member of the order Porifera is widely regarded as one of the most successful animated marine invertebrates of all time. Currently he is the star of Nickolodeon’s most-watched programme, and has (literally) spawned a merchandising empire worth billions of dollars worldwide.

But success in the animation world breeds many enemies, it seems. In 2005, Spongebob was targeted by radical US Christian organisations, which pointed towards his relationship with neighbour Patrick Star (a pink echinoderm who suffers from bi-polar disorder) as evidence that Spongebob was… gay.

Exactly why this was an issue remains something of a mystery. For one thing, real marine sponges are in most cases hermaphrodites anyway, and evangelical groups don’t complain about them. Besides: Sesame Street’s Big Bird was very clearly a lesbian, Kermit the Frog a sexual deviant, Miss Piggy a nymphomaniac… and the Great Gonzo had a fetish for chickens, of all things. None of this seemed to bother anyone when those characters graced our TV sets some 30 years ago: so why should it be any different today?

Nor is the phenomenon limited only to Spongebob. Some of you might remember a similar controversy that had erupted over the Teletubbies a few years earlier. Tinky-Winky was just too… well… effeminate for some people’s liking. His handbag was the wrong colour, and he had a habit of uttering unmistakably homo-erotic mating calls such as ‘coo’, ‘uh-oh’, ‘tee-hee’, and ‘toodle-oo!’

But while various efforts were made to ban programmes like Teletubbies on these and other ‘moral’ grounds, a new front has now opened up in the ongoing war on children’s animation. Spongebob, it seems, not only has lewd designs on your offspring’s future sexual orientation – he can also seriously screw up their chances of academic success.

School versus Squarepants

Does Spongebob really have the power to soak up your children’s attention span? According to a study conducted by the University of Virginia and published this week in the journal Pediatrics, the answer is: yes, most definitely.

The study exposed two groups of four-year-old children to nine-minute clips of two different cartoons – Spongebob versus Caillou: the latter being a ‘realistic’, slow-paced cartoon specifically designed for the 2-5 age group. Meanwhile a third group spent nine minutes drawing pictures, without watching any TV at all.

Immediately after watching these clips, the researchers tested the children’s “executive function”: which, to quote the study’s main author Dr Dimitri Christakis, measures “your ability to stay on task, to not be distracted and to persist on task.”

Needless to add, the group exposed to Spongebob fared “considerably worse” than the other two (which incidentally yielded near-identical results). The test was repeated after half an hour’s worth of Spongebob, and – perhaps predictably – the results showed that longer exposure resulted in greater attention deficiency.

However, to be fair to our spongiform yellow hero, two small snags were subsequently identified in the study’s methodology (unsurprisingly, by Nickolodeon itself). One, Spongebob Squarepants is expressly aimed at children between six and 11… and not at four-year-olds, who have their own flagship cartoon on Nickolodeon, the slower-paced Dora the Explorer. Two, the sample used (60) was far too small for the results to be considered scientifically unimpeachable.

But whether or not the experiment provides the last word on Spongebob and his underwater adventures, it remains a fact that parents often suspect (and complain) that modern TV is slowly eroding their children’s ability to pay attention, to perform well at school, and to a certain extent even to socialise with their peers.

High on the list of regular complaints is the sheer pace of modern cartoons, which is perceived to induce unrealistic stimulus expectation among children, resulting in quick loss of interest when the expected stimuli are not immediately forthcoming. This, many parents argue, undermines a child’s capacity for patience, and has a direct bearing on academic performance. Another regular complaint is that – unlike the situation 30 years ago, when children’s TV was limited to a mere two hours between 6 and 8pm – the advent of cable television has translated in availability of children’s TV 24 hours a day: thus opening the door to the possibility of addiction.

Easily influenced, easily cured

Local professionals such as counseling psychologist Henri Cassar are cautious when it comes to making direct correlations with individual programmes such as Spongebob, and specific pathologies among children.

“It is difficult to make any direct causal link between a cartoon and, for instance, the short attention span of any given child,” he commented. “The fact that a child who watches a certain programme also suffers from attention disorders doesn’t necessarily mean that the disorder is caused by the programme. Even if it is the case, there is no indication of whether the problem is long-term in nature.”

Nonetheless, Cassar does identify two specific problems with the medium of television.

“One, it is not interactive: it’s not like talking to a person, in which case there’s an immediate response. Two, children tend to view television as a window on the world, when in actual fact there is a marked difference the world of TV and the world of reality”.

As an example he points towards a controversy that had erupted in the wake of the 1980s movie Back to the Future, starring Michael J. Fox.

“After that film, there were thousands of cases in which teenagers had to be hospitalised, sometimes with grievous injuries, after trying to emulate the scene in which Fox holds onto the back of a car on his skateboard”.

For Cassar, this is symptomatic of children’s overall impressionability. “In the movies there are no repercussions. In the real world there are, and sometimes very serious ones.”

On another, less immediately visible level there is also an issue regarding stereotyping.

“This is particularly true of cartoons,” Cassar explains. “Take the example of Tom and Jerry – and I stress this is just an example. The pattern is always the same: cat chases mouse, mouse runs away from cat. This leads to the impression that cats always chase mice. But the reality is not always true. Turn to the Discovery Channel, and you’ll find documentaries describing species of rats which are big enough to attack a cat. Again, the ‘reality’ of television isn’t necessarily the same as scientific reality…”

While cats and mice may be harmless stereotypes to indulge in, Cassar argues that not all such stereotyping is equally innocuous. “Very often, cartoons will portray men as being strong and virile, while women are weak and always in need of rescuing. This creates a lasting impression which does not correspond with reality…”

Nonetheless, Cassar plays down the harmful effects of over-exposure to television offerings such as Spongebob. “The important thing to remember is that children are very malleable and easily influenced, and that this tends to work both ways.”

If, he argues, a child is unduly influenced by a particular show, the problem usually fades away once the child no longer watches that programme.

“I personally doubt that pathologies associated with television are really long-term. Problems might exist, but the harm that is caused is not likely to be permanent”.

Quantity versus quality

Cher Engerer, psychologist, argues that it is not the quality of TV that impacts most on children, but the quantity.

“Typically, children begin watching cartoons on television at an early age of six months, and by the age two or three they become enthusiastic viewers. This has become a problem because too many children are watching too much television and some of the shows that they are watching (even if they are cartoons) have become violent and addictive.

“Some years ago in the US, it was estimated that children were watching an average of 18,000 hours of TV from the time the start school to graduation, when compared to the 13,000 hours they spent in school! I’m quite sure Maltese statistics are comparable. Children seem to be becoming passive consumers of television, internet and video games, and as a result, other facets of their psychosocial development are being hindered.”

According to Engerer, TV is a factor which needs to be moderated and controlled.

“TV should be a luxury for a child, in that it is watched for a specific time-frame in the day, not a way of life, or the normal thing to do to kill time. Unfortunately, the excessive consumption of TV and other media in some children is disabling them from socialising effectively with their family and peers, is stifling their creativity, and at times, yes it is certainly modelling undesirable behaviour, such as aggression and violence”.

 The creative energy in children is enhanced and developed when they are given the opportunity to produce something, not consume something, she adds.

“It is also a well known fact that children learn through modelling and vicarious means, therefore it is inevitable that watching violent cartoons will lead to some manifestations of violent behaviour in the child. Three major effects proven by psychological research, caused by children seeing violence on television, are that the child may become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others; children who watch violence do not fear violence nor are they bothered by violence in general and the children are more likely to become aggressive or use harmful actions towards others. This is where the role of the parents as moderators comes in. I don’t want to come across as being anti TV, internet or video games, because they too have their function”.

But it’s not all doom and gloom – television can have positive effects on children too.

“Children can learn a lot from TV. I have noticed that children have increased their verbal capacity and are speaking fluently at an earlier age. Some cartoons are also educational and deliver concepts such as tolerance of diversity, exposure to the arts, values, and also cultural components”.

As with all things, the key appears to be moderation.

“The people who end up in my clinic are usually those who have somehow lost the balance in their lives, because most things are not essentially harmful, provided they’re done in moderation. If we were to scrutinise the content of all children’s media, starting with nursery rhymes, fairy-tales, Disney movies and the like, each and every one of them have something in them to criticize and which may be deemed potentially harmful. At the end of the day, what we expose our children to is our choice in the early days especially, and these choices need to be taken wisely, bearing in mind that we also don’t want to set our children up to believe that the world is a ‘perfect’ place”.  

Like Cassar, Engerer also has her doubts regarding the causal relationship that may exist between cartoons and behavioural disorders.

“It’s generally a chicken and egg scenario, i.e. we can’t be sure whether the children are angry and therefore attach to specific cartoons, or if it is the cartoons themselves that are making them aggressive. Likewise, we cannot deduce whether it’s the excessive consumption of cartoons that is lowering their attention span or making children hyperactive, or if it is in fact caused by the simultaneous neglect by their parents. Generally, it’s more complex than a simple linear equation of cause and effect…”
Nonetheless, she thinks that the scepticism of some parents regarding the programmes their children watch is justified.

“Parents need to monitor, moderate and control what their children watch. It is also valuable for parents to interact with their children whilst they watch TV. It’s not just about sitting a child in front of the box for hours on end while we get other things done. If used wisely, TV can be a moment of intimacy between parents and child, and educational on many fronts. However, I emphasise the importance of choice, filtering, and moderation.”