CSotD: As the twigs are bent …
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Derf Backderf on the direct correlation between television and later life. (As always, click on the cartoon for a larger version)
Or perhaps more specifically, on the correlation between vacuous-but-well-promoted scientific studies and screaming headlines. If the researchers in this study had used a less popular fast-paced cartoon, their study would have languished in the lower bowels of Google. But someone in the chain had the sense to trumpet "Spongebob Squarepants" and the thing went, well, not "viral," since that suggests a more authentically grassroots effect, but it sure got a lot of publicity.
Most of which unintentionally misread and overstated its significance to nearly as great extent as Derf's intentional absurdity.
Thus was it always. When the Beach Boys were a hot commodity, somebody came up with "Surfer's Knob," which was a kind of callousy thing that supposedly developed on your knee from surfing too much. During the tennis craze, "Tennis Elbow" got a lot more attention than it probably deserved. Whenever something is popular, there's always a "study" to prove that it is also very, very bad for you and your kids and society as a whole.
I have this on my mind because it's closely related to what is — or isn't — going on down on Wall Street. Media manipulation is a key tool in the kit, whether you're selling hamburgers or revolution. Adbusters is supposed to know all about the media, but PETA is much better at getting massive free coverage for their messages.
Although, y'know, they all owe a debt to the master.
Anyway, someone at either the University of Virginia or the American Academy of Pediatrics knows enough to splash "Spongebob" on a subject line rather than to drone on about "fast-paced cartoons."
The study isn't anywhere near as interesting as Derf's take on it. I don't know that it is "flawed" so much as it is "minor." They took 60 volunteer four-year-olds, which is to say, 60 kids from middleclass families rather than 60 random kids, and divided them into three groups.
One group watched nine minutes of Spongebob, one watched nine minutes of a slower-paced PBS show and one colored for nine minutes (all doing this individually, not en masse). Then they had them do the Towers of Hanoi puzzle and the famous "torture the child" test where they are offered a pile of treats or a couple of treats but they have to wait five and a half minutes to get the pile. If they break before then, they only get the couple of treats.
The kids who had just watched Spongebob performed worse. Which is interesting within the context of a whole lot of other studies that would help figure out what it means, but is kind of meaningless by itself.
Except, y'know, don't show your kid a bunch of Spongebob right before you need to have him to sit and stare at a plate of cookies without eating any.
They came after Sesame Street for the same thing, what, 40 years ago? Whenever. The original idea of Sesame Street was that if you kept it fast-paced, colorful and exciting, kids would learn the alphabet and how to count to 20, in the same way they learn advertising jingles.
Then researchers stepped in and told them fast-pacing was bad, so they took out the fun stuff and life went on.
They didn't have Spongebob or Sesame Street when I was a kid, but I can still sing "Kellogg's Sugar Corn Pops! Sugar Pops Are Tops!" and "N-E-S-T-L-E-S, Nestles makes the very best, chock-lit (clop!)"
I can also recite the alphabet and count to 20.
Not so good at staring at cookies without eating them. Or even knowing they are in the cupboard without eating them.
On the other hand, when we were kids, what we had on TV was "The Adventures of Robin Hood" with Richard Greene, and "Zorro" with Guy Williams, and those were slow-paced programs that didn't mess with our abilities to stack round things or stare at cookies.
But I often wondered, then, why our parents got so pissed later on, when we challenged corrupt governments.
Man, I would have loved to have carved a "Z" on Spiro Agnew's pants.
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