Cartoon Seizures: Reality? or Fabrication of the Mind?

Cartoon induced seizures have long been the source of scrutiny among the public. After the Pokémon scare that occurred in Japan ten years ago, where 12,000 children reported having illnesses ranging from nausea to seizures, a new controversial cartoon inducing advertisement has been under fire.

According to Live Science, creators of the 2012 London and England Olympic marketing logo have been thrown headlong into controversy with Briton politicians. Adversaries of the logo say that the marketing ad offends people, and even goes as far as to suggest that the logo is dangerous to the public.

Three weeks ago, twenty four reports of seizures were blamed on the marketing logo when they watched a short animated clip of it on the Olympics London 2012 Web site. Though it is proven that bright flashing lights can cause seizures in people with photosensitive epilepsy, researchers disregard the phenomenon as mass hysteria. Simply put, those with epilepsy are at a higher risk of being influenced by the effects of the lights.

After the scare, parents and doctors concerned about the safety of British children watching the marketing logo on TV aimed to remove the clip. Creators, advertisers, and TV stations quickly complied with the public, and took off the clip with fortunately, little to no damage done. This issue though, has brought into the public eye awareness about new technologies and public safety.

The cause of this was elusive until researchers finally realized that cartoons didn't cause seizures in thousands of children as reminiscent of the Pokémon scare of 97'. Plainly put, the seizures were actually caused by the paranoiac mind set that the public adapted to. This mass sociogenic illness, also known as mass hysteria occurred when everyone thought that this illness was happening, and thus indirectly induced it upon others.

After analyzing the Pokémon panic, researchers have sought out the symptoms of the victims, and have concluded that the seizures of the children were merely imagined by parents. The cartoon induced symptoms varied differently from real seizures, in that the cartoon symptoms included headaches, dizziness, and vomiting while medical seizures had symptoms included drooling, stiffness, and tongue biting.

Statistical data reveal that photosensitive epilepsy occurs in only about 1-in-5,000 people, which accounts for 0.02 percent of the population. This figure comes nowhere near the number of children that were affected during cartoon scares as the number accounted for more than 7 percent of viewers.

Mass hysteria is reflected in the studies of children that learned of the cartoon's attacks at school, where the reported number of incidents boosted up to more than 10,000 the next day. The thousands of students affected by the cartoon seizures began popping up only after media coverage and only after word got around by mouth that the outbreaks of mass hysteria began.

It is important to note that while photosensitive epilepsy is a very real condition, the chances of it happening to people are very slim. So minimal is the likelihood of photosensitive epilepsy occurring that the odds of children getting injured during a car ride or eating peanuts greatly outweigh the risks of watching cartoons and video games.

Benjamin Radford. "Cartoon Seizures: Are They Real?" Live Science. http://www.livescience.com/health/070620_cartoon_seizures.html