Apparently the television has lasting negative effects on the developing brain and may actually permanently "rewire" youngsters� brains with all the fast paced imagery. 

The study appears in the April edition of the journal Pediatrics and included 1,345 U.S children. According the author, Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Centre in Seattle, Wa, children under 2 face a 10% increased risk of attention problems within their next five years for every hour of daily television viewing in early life.  

"The truth is there are lots of reasons for children not to watch television," Christakis wrote. "The newborn brain develops very rapidly during the first 2 to 3 years of life. We know from studies of newborn rats that if you expose them to different levels of visual stimuli, the architecture of the brain looks very different."

The Time of London reports that this is the first such study that links attention deficit problems to television viewing. Previous studies have found that television plays a part in obesity and aggressiveness, according to the Times article. 

So beware Sponge Bob may keep your kid out of Harvard. 
 

.