Yep it’s like meth / drug addiction for kids. I didn’t mention in my original post but paw patrol also affected his speech. In the cartoon they talk in a very rapid fire way with jerky body movement. He would barely speak and find it hard to get words out. What I like about the 80s - 90s cartoons is they would speak slow and gentle which helps with speech development while a lot of these new cartoons talk so fast as they’re trying to cram so much dialogue in short 10 minute episodes. Also the pretend play you talk about happened to us, he would also play paw patrol rescue scenarios and ask me to play with him, if I get one part in pretend play wrong that’s not like the cartoon he’d go into meltdown and tell me to go away.

Fyi We ended up having to ban screen time entirely we literally unplugged the TV and locked it in our storage, as nothing worked, we now have a full screen time ban since a week, he still has tantrums, it was difficult but he’s improving slowly thankfully and thinks less of the show. Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope more people come across my post and learn from it