Experts and parents issue warning over huge Netflix children’s show that acts like ‘cocaine for babies’ – as mothers are forced to ban ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ kids from watching

For more than ten years, CoComelon has been playing babysitter for hundreds of millions of children around the world.

The sweet children’s show with hypnotic nursery rhymes and plasticine-like rainbow colors was created by Californian father of two, Jay Jeon, to teach his two children the alphabet.

Today, CoComelon is a ratings phenomenon, with the most viewed videos on YouTube watched by an average of 1 billion, mostly preschoolers, each year.

But despite the show being fairly mundane and based on songs and rhymes dating back decades or even centuries, many parents have said their children have symptoms of addiction and withdrawal when they turn off the show – and call it “Cocaine Melon.”

On Netflix, the series was watched as many minutes – 33.27 billion in fact – as Disney+’s Luca, Moana, Raya and the Last Dragon and Frozen II combined.

The success has also earned Mr. Jeon, who directed TV commercials, and the author’s wife from his children $460 million. They came up with the idea in 2006, with their executives insisting that all episodes be planned in collaboration with experts to make children feel safe, help with their education and encourage good behavior.

CoComelon’s owners Moonbug have been asked to comment.

A Cambridge academic has warned parents that these types of programs can cause ‘technoference’ – disruption of a child’s relationship with parents and siblings due to the use of electronic devices.

Some moms and dads say the show has turned their children into “CoComelon zombies.”

One mother told MailOnline that they let their two-year-old son watch the show. But the little boy, now three, would explode with anger when they turned him out, so they had to ban him.

She said: ‘CoComelon appears to be a colourful, stimulating program suitable for children, but its damaging impact on our son’s behavior led us to ban the show completely even for short periods.

‘He became fixated and focused as he watched – which is of course attractive to busy parents with other children or tasks. The problem arises when the program is stopped: the immediate aggression and lack of emotional management were frightening. We had never witnessed him have such a visceral reaction to any other children’s TV show.”

The removal of the cartoon sparked volcanic anger, she said.

“In the immediate vicinity he threw himself on the ground and banged his fists on the ground, apparently ‘coming back’ from the trance he was in,” the mother warned, adding that in the period afterward he was “generally grumpy and was combative’. ‘.

Sally Hogg, Senior Policy Fellow at the Center for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning at the University of Cambridge, told MailOnline that while screen time is not necessarily bad, missed opportunities for a child to play and learning can be a ‘lost opportunity’ in their development.

She said even babies now “interact with digital media, including YouTube videos, as part of their daily lives.

She said: ‘The impact of viewing online content on young children’s development depends on three things: the content of the media; the context in which they watch it, and what they don’t do as a result of watching it. When very young children are viewing digital media, it is important that it does not take up so much time that it limits their opportunities to play, communicate with adults and other children and be active.

Ideally, parents should watch the content with their children, help their children understand its content and use it as a basis for conversations and shared time together.

Early interactions between parents and children are essential for early development, and if a parent or child is distracted by digital media, this ‘technoference’ can get in the way of positive interactions.

Parents should also be careful about giving children screens to calm them down 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 reaction of some children when programs like CoComelon are turned off, she said: ‘Children often feel frustrated when adults stop them from doing something they like, or ask them to do something they don’t like. they don’t like it. want. This is a normal part of child development.

‘If a child gets angry when he stops doing something, that doesn’t necessarily say anything about the value or harm of that object or medium.

‘But if something regularly causes problems for a child or causes difficulties in the relationship between parents and children, that suggests that parents need to think carefully about the way it is used, and also think about how they manage their child’s expectations and how they understand boundaries.”

CoComelon founder Jay Jeon’s supporters consider him a “creative genius” who is “dedicated” to early childhood education.

He was born in South Korea, moved to California and started working in advertising. He later directed a small number of low-budget television commercials.

When his two sons were in daycare, he and his wife, an author, sang rhymes to them and decided to create simple 2D animations focusing on the alphabet.

Their kids enjoyed it, so they started they uploaded the cartoons to YouTube in 2007 and named their channel ABC Kid TV.

Fast forward 17 years, it has about 170 million subscribers.

The number one video is the two-minute, fifty-two-second Bath Song, which is the fourth most viewed video on YouTube and has been viewed nearly seven billion times in six years.

A baby climbs into the bath with his brother, pours soap in to create bubbles and washes their hair and faces, all to a hypnotic song.

Other billion-viewed hits include Baa Baa Black Sheep and a version of Baby Shark.

The creators say the biggest breakthrough came when they went from 2D to 3D animation in 2017.

In 2020, his production company Treasure Studio sold the show to Moonbug, which has expanded the show and has a huge team working on it.

Views increased during the pandemic, where videos about washing hands and going to the doctor proved popular.

Each episode lasts approximately three months.

Experts and writers have questioned whether it is right for videos to be aimed at children so young.

Susan Kim, who has written for Thomas & Friends and Arthur, told The New Yorker: ‘It used to be that you couldn’t say certain things, otherwise you would be reprimanded in the room.

‘First of all, you weren’t allowed to say that something was for one to two year olds. I think everyone felt, whether they had read the white papers about it or not, that such young children should not be put in front of the video and should be left alone.”

Susan Linn, the author of Consuming Kids, told Time: ‘It’s not that CoComelon is addictive.

“It’s true that almost everything on the Internet is designed to be addictive.

‘You ensure that children become dependent on screens for stimulation and reassurance. What we really want is for children to be able to entertain and calm themselves down.”