In a paper provocatively titled "Does Television Rot Your Brain?", two University of Chicago economists present what they call "strong evidence against the prevailing wisdom that childhood television viewing causes harm to cognitive or educational development."

Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro looked at children's test scores from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, a period when television was rapidly being introduced across the country. Because some communities weren't wired for television right away, they were able to compare how children in homes with televisions performed compared to those without televisions. They found no negative effects, and some positive effects, on test scores.

I love this study, but probably for all the wrong reasons. It's truly beyond me how one can compare the impact on a growing young brain of singing along with the Mouseketeers (Em-Eye-Cee...See you real soon! Kay-Ee-Why...Why? Because we like you...) to that of watching grown people eat insects (Fear Factor). So I leave that to the Phd's.

Instead, jumping nimbly over the abstruse discussions of "controlling for area fixed effects", "within-area, cross-cohort variation in television exposure," and "observable covariates of exam performance," my attention is grabbed by an admirably simple chart on the very last page of this 51-page paper, listing the top five television programs watched by kids, 1953 and 2003.

The boob tube sure has changed in 50 years.

Topping the charts in 1953: I Love Lucy. In 2003: The Simpsons. Hmm. Would you rather have Little Ricky or Homer Simpson over for a sleepover? Number two in 1953: Superman. In 2003: American Idol. Superpowers in tights, vs uneven talents in the spotlights... Numbers three, four and five in 1953: The Red Buttons Show, Dragnet (you go, Joe Friday!), and The Roy Rogers Show. In 2003: Malcolm in the Middle, Fear Factor, and Survivor, Amazon.

Gentzkow and Shapiro argue that this list shows that "the popular children's shows of 2003 do not seem obviously less cognitively demanding than those of 1953." But they sure are different. The humor is meaner. Humiliation is big. And who knows what the impact of all that ersatz reality is going to be on this group of kids as they try to make sense of the world. Will it breed healthy skepticism or cynicism, help them dream big and take chances or convince them that it's all rigged? We'll have to wait and see.