At present, kids spend too much time and energy watching TV and playing computer games.
In real life, young children like watching fast-paced television cartoons 1 are full of images and activities that are not 2 in real life.
It's what some people 3 calling the "SpongeBob Effect".
University of Virginia researchers wanted to 4 whether watching "SpongeBob" could affect kids' ability to learn immediately after 5 the show.
To find it out, two groups of 6 children watched either a short video of "SpongeBob" or a slower-paced and more realistic lively show 7 "Caillou".
A third group of children 8 time drawing instead of 9 television. "And what we found is that children 10 had been in the ‘SpongeBob' group were performing only about half as well as 11 children. So they were at about 12 ability," Lillard said. Lillard is careful about that her study looked only at 13 young children learned immediately after watching the TV shows, so she cannot say whether watching these kinds of programs has a lasting effect on learning. "But I would say that 14 might want to think about when children watch such shows and perhaps how frequently they watch them 15 ,"she said.
