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Assuming Direct Control

Never Before Heard News: Violent Cartoons and Late-Nigh Technology Will Keep Your Preschoolers Up at Night

by Alanna Bennett | 4:08 pm, August 12th, 2012


A lot of us have memories of waking up early Saturday mornings and placing ourselves firmly in front of the television, overflowing bowls of Lucky Charms the only physical entities allowed between us and the TV set. It’s practically a hallmark of being a child. A study by the Seattle Children’s Research Institute, however, s saying that (shocker) the violence in some of these cartoons may have a negative effect on some of its younger viewers.

According to the study, young children watching violent entertainment geared towards an audience even just a few years older than then experienced interrupted sleep patterns. More nightmares, “daytime fatigue,” and trouble waking up were experienced by the kids aged 3 to 5 that the study worked with.

These sleep troubles were experienced both after experiencing violent programming and if they were allowed to watch television or go on the computer after 7pm.

So what qualifies as violent programming for children of this age group?

“Bugs Bunny counts as violence in this study, and so does Batman and so does Pokémon,” lead author Michelle Garrison told MedPage Today/ABC News. “Slapstick funny violence in Bugs Bunny or superhero violence in Batman or more realistic violence — we didn’t see a difference in terms of the impact on sleep,”

None of this is particularly surprising; parents and studies alike have been going on about the impact of violence on children for ages and ages. Still, it’s kind of a bummer for the kids–as well as for the parents who have to get their riled-up kids to sleep.

On the study itself:

The finding comes from week-long sleep diaries prepared by parents of 612 three-, four- and five-year-olds as part of a larger research project on sleep and media use. In the sleep diaries, parents reported how often the child had difficulty getting to sleep, woke up repeatedly, had nightmares, had difficulty waking in the morning or was tired in the daytime.

These media diaries found that the children were watching TV or using a computer about 73 minutes a day on average, although some scored more than four hours, Garrison and colleagues reported. That’s less than what some other studies found — reporting averages of two, three or even four hours in the same age group, she said.

A lot of the trouble these kids had in getting to sleep didn’t stem from hours playing overtly violent video games or watching the Saw movies; a lot of it came from watching things that were almost aimed at their age group, but not quite; programming that was made for kids just a couple years older than them.

Even further, it’s focused very much around what the children themselves find frightening; if they’re more afraid of clowns than of axe-wielding coyotes, it’s the former that’s going to affect their sleep. Not necessarily the thing that censors or parents might mark as scary or overly violent.

The study also emphasizes just how much of an effect media use in general can have on young children. Dr. Nusheen Ameenuddin, a pediatrician at the media clinic, said that identifying media use has become a key part of patient care, especially when it comes to academic, behavioral, or weight-oriented issues; “Over the past decade, the evidence linking screen time to sleep problems has become stronger.”

Technology is in many ways a mass opiate; we watch TV to sooth ourselves after long days at work, we stick the kids in front of the TV set or the iPad when they just won’t stop destroying the house. And as someone who spends a large amount of her time in some way connected to technology as part of her job, I have to say that I am very much a fan of the things that it can do.

But it can also be the easy way out, and when it comes to kids especially the growing dependence on media is one that no generation has really seen the long-term effects of yet. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

(via ABC News) (Image via JD Hancock)

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  • http://wpmututorials.com Andrea_R

    I wonder if these kids were in houses with older children, or the parents were just letting their kids watch inappropriate cartoons.

    With older kids in the house, it’s easier to let that slide.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=507849795 Seanna Tucker

    Well of course, for three-five year olds. 

    Do this study on 7-10 year olds, though, and they’re probably fine. 

  • http://twitter.com/amongthegoblins Katherine Traylor

    Toddlers? Computers keep ME up at night. I need at least half an hour or so away from the screen before I can get to sleep.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001470948875 Caitie Foster

     Not necessarily.  It said violent programs aimed at children only a few years older could have the same effect.  For the 3-5 year olds this study was aimed at, that means that Spongebob is considered a violent program (as Spongebob is for children seven and older).  And very few parents would bat an eye at plopping their four year old in front of Spongebob.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Mark-Brown/100003806213451 Mark Brown

    Note how it makes the classic blunder(*) of assuming that all children are identical. I’ve known ten-year-olds who get nightmares from Scooby Doo, and I’ve known another ten-year-old who loved Fullmetal Alchemist (no, I didn’t bother explaining “animation not for kids” to his parents. I doubt they’d have understood anyway). It’s the parent’s responsibility to gauge what their child is able to tolerate on an individual level.

    (* Along with getting involved in a land war in Asia and going up against a Sicillian when death is on the line.)

  • Anonymous

    In other news, if you make that face it will freeze that way, and if you keep eating all that candy you’re going to turn into a candy bar.

  • Caravelle

    Huh. Not exactly a blinded study was it ? The fact that it’s the parents reporting the sleep difficulties it looks to me like a huge potential source of confirmation bias. And I wasn’t completely clear on how they linked violent TV vs any TV to sleep disturbances, but this article explained it a lot better :
    http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_127962.html
    “Kids between 3 and 5 years old who were exposed only to age-appropriate
    viewing materials in the hour before bed were 64 percent less likely to
    have any type of sleep disturbance, such as trouble falling asleep,
    difficulty staying asleep or nightmares, according to a new study.    ”
    (it also describes the setup a bit differently from how the ABC article does, talking about randomizing families into groups that got information on what media to expose children to, and families that got information on nutrition)

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