CoComelon has been a global babysitter to hundreds of millions of kids for more than ten years.
California father-of-two Jay Jeon devised the sugarcoated, adorable children’s programme, which features hypnotic nursery songs and rainbow-coloured plasticine, to teach his two kids the alphabet.
Currently, CoComelon is a ratings phenomenon; each year, an average of 1 billion people, mostly preschoolers, watch its single most popular videos on YouTube.
But despite the show being fairly mundane and based on songs and rhymes going back decades or even centuries, many parents have said their children have suffered symptoms of addiction and withdrawal when they switch it off – branding it ‘Cocainemelon’.
On Netflix, the series was viewed for as many minutes – 33.27 billion in fact – as Disney+’s Luca, Moana, Raya and the Last Dragon and Frozen II combined.
This success has also made Mr Jeon, who directed TV commercials, and his children’s author wife $460 million. They came up with the idea in 2006 with their executives insisting that all episodes are planned with experts to make children feel safe, help with their education and encourage good behaviour.
CoComelon’s owners Moonbug have been asked to comment.
One Cambridge academic has warned parents that shows like these can cause ‘technoference’ – disruption of a child’s relationship with parents and siblings due to the use of electronic devices.
Some mothers and fathers have said the show turned their children into ‘CoComelon zombies’.
One mother told MailOnline that they allowed their two-year-old son to watch the show. But the little boy, now three, would explode with rage when they turned it off so they had to ban it.
She said: ‘CoComelon appears to be a colourful, stimulating child-appropriate program but the detrimental impact on our son’s behaviour led us to completely ban the show even for short periods of time.
‘He became fixated, zoned out whilst watching – which naturally appeals to busy parents with other children or tasks to see to. The issue arises when the program is stopped – the immediate aggression and lack of emotional management was frightening. We had never witnessed him have such a visceral reaction to any other children’s TV show’.
Taking the cartoon away led to volcanic anger, she said.
‘In the immediate, he would throw himself to the floor hitting his fists on the ground, seemingly “coming back around” from the trance he was in’, the mother warned, adding that in the period afterwards he was ‘generally grumpy and combative’.
Sally Hogg, Senior Policy Fellow at the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning at the University of Cambridge, told MailOnline that while screen time isn’t necessarily bad – missed chances for a child to play and learn in other ways can be an ‘opportunity lost’ in their development.
She said that even babies are now ‘interacting with digital media, including YouTube videos, as part of their daily lives.
She said: ‘The impact of watching online content on early child development depends on three things: the content of the media; the context in which they are watching it, and what they are not doing as a result of watching it. If very young children are watching digital media, it’s important that it’s not taking up so much time that it reduces their opportunities to play, to interact with adults and other children, and to be active.
In an ideal world, parents would watch the content with their kids, guiding them through it and utilising it as a springboard for discussion and quality time.
Early parent-child interactions are vital for early development, and if either parent or child is distracted by digital media this “technoference” can get in the way of positive interactions.
Parents should also be cautious of giving children screens to soothe them when they are upset or feeling other difficult emotions because talking about and learning to manage emotions is an important part of early development’.
When asked about the often angry and even violent response by some children when shows such as CoComelon are switched off, she said: ‘Children do often feel frustrated when adults stop them doing something they enjoy, or ask them to do something they don’t want to. This is a normal part of child development.
‘If a child is getting upset at stopping doing something, it doesn’t necessarily tell us about the value or harm of that object or media.
‘But if something is regularly causing distress to a child or difficultly in parent-child relationships then that suggests parents should be thoughtful about how it’s used, including thinking about how they manage their child’s expectations and understanding of boundaries’.
I don’t think it’s the programme per se, but the amount of time spent watching it. Some children watch TV from the time they get up to the time they go to bed – any programme can become addictive if watched often enough.
If a child is given boundaries and has less time to watch TV they would less likely have these types of tantrums, but it’s sometimes far easier to sit a child in front of the TV for a quiet life.
Children should be allowed to watch TV for a limited time per day, and then hopefully there won’t be any issues or tantrums et cetera. This limit should include phones and tablets as well because children should be outdoors, playing games et cetera with their friends, not glued to their devices. Sadly, in this day and age, it’s far too dangerous to let your child outside to play, but we are only born into the prisons that we make for ourselves!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 