Is Cocomelon profiting off children’s addiction ?

Is the tempo of the shows you select for your children important? Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which many parents of small children grew up watching, and the more recent Daniel Tiger are examples of slow-paced television. Afterward, there is CoComelon.

CoComelon includes repetitious nursery rhyme-style songs and the sounds of incessant giggling that address anything from bath time to manners and everything in between. Despite the fact that many parents and caregivers feel that the songs can stay in their heads for days, it appears that your kids are completely engrossed, and you enjoy watching them be joyfully amused. Additionally, monitoring CoComelon can help you find the time you need to prepare dinner or simply take a rest.

However, is watching CoComelon too stimulating for kids? Here, professionals explain the true problem with the well-liked program and offer advice on how to support your kids if they start to feel overstimulated.

Some folks worry that the tempo may be overstimulating their children, and others believe that kids may adore CoComelon a little too much. The tempo, repetition, and panning of the show are assessed in a number of videos. Users discovered that scenes in Cocomelon change every one to three seconds. Additionally, the same user showed how almost all of CoComelon’s shots alternate between quick pacing, zooming in and out, and panning.

It’s not entirely clear how much of CoComelon’s runaway popularity stems from this formula and how much it owes to the pandemic, which put more kids in front of screens. As parents juggled childcare and remote work, demand for kiddie content spiked 52% between January 2020 and February 2022, according to data from Parrot Analytics. Either way, the success of the show is attracting big money. In November, Moonbug was acquired for $3 billion by two Disney alums backed by the private-equity firm Blackstone. Since then, the company has rolled out a CoComelon live tour, a Spotify podcast, and just about every form of merchandise you can imagine, from bubble machines to throw pillows.

The grip that CoComelon has on infants and toddlers is unique, according to both parents and programming executives. The scores of TikTok videos that show children rushing as they hear the marimba tones of the theme tune serve as evidence. After Mama and Dada, Zhou’s daughter’s third word was CoCo. Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president at Nielsen, adds, “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like it when it comes to generating kids’ streaming audiences.”

However, several minor details, according to experts, make the show particularly enticing to younger children. CoComelon’s universe is colorful and devoid of sharp corners and edges. Because it is filmed from a low viewpoint, the audience experiences the world through the eyes of a toddler. There is never any conflict on CoComelon since the characters are always nice to one other. Additionally, the subjects are universal: viewers watch JJ go through basic struggles like learning to share and becoming sick, as well as familiar tasks like potty training and putting on shoes. According to Patrick Reese, general manager of Moonbug, the program creates a song around “every meaningful moment” in a toddler’s life.

Child-development experts say CoComelon is no more problematic than most other children’s TV shows. “It’s not that CoComelon is addictive,” says Susan Linn, the author of Consuming Kids. “It’s that just about everything on the web is designed to be addictive.” That design works; even before the pandemic, kids under 2 spent about 49 minutes a day on screens, according to Common Sense Media. “You’re setting up kids to start depending on screens for stimulation and soothing,” Linn says. “What we really want is for kids to be able to amuse and soothe themselves.”