Just Let Your Kid Watch TV, It's Fine

Parents need to let go of "screen time" guilt, especially during a pandemic

Just Let Your Kid Watch TV, It's Fine

The recent conversation about soaring screen time and its effect on kids has been exhaustive. And exhausting. Should we be alarmed? Yes. No. Set limits. Lower the bar. Think of their retinas. If the last 12 months have proven anything, it’s that—no matter how well-intentioned the internet—I’m not going to find a concrete answer when I Google “am I a bad mother for my letting my child watch a YouTube video of three animated siblings singing about making rainbow popsicles out of pureed fruit?” 

“OMG we literally just watched this!!!” a friend messaged me on Instagram when I posted a video of my son, rapt, watching the popsicle video. Another: “My kids are obsessed.” A third: “I literally can’t sleep at night because those songs are in my head.” In all, a dozen DMs from friends and followers, each confirming their children’s infatuation with a series of short videos called CoComelon. This was surprising but it shouldn’t have been. 

As of March 2021, CoComelon is the number one kids' YouTube channel in the world, which means 105 million subscribers watch as a CGI animated baby named JJ, his family, his teacher, and occasionally some farm animals sing nursery rhymes and original earworms while doing fun things like using the blender to make ice pops and going swimming, and also important things like learning to use the potty and when to appropriately say sorry.  

Statistically, it’s not strange that 12 people I know would be plugged into the three-year-old brand, but—unlike Daniel Tiger or Peppa Pig—I‘d never heard CoComelon mentioned in a broad cultural context until the pandemic hit. YouTube conveniently suggested it to me during the early days of lockdown, and a year later, it appears to be very much in the conversation: it’s the subject of a conspiratorial listicle in Buzzfeed’s Parents section, its growth has been tracked by Forbes and Variety, it’s been meme-ifed, and—maybe the biggest badge of honor, depending on who you ask—it unwittingly found itself at the center of an internet scandal after popular YouTuber PewDiePie inexplicably took shots at the channel in a February diss track which has since been removed from the platform. 

Additional numbers support its relevance—outside of massive subscriber success, CoComelon also pulls in more than 3 billion views a month on YouTube, spent over 120 days on Netflix’s Top 10 list, and was ranked the #1 pre-school artist on Spotify with more than 50 million streams across all music digital streaming platforms. 

But the noticeable uptick in chatter within my insular network about baby JJ and his cohorts makes me think at least part of CoCoMelon's growing visibility can be attributed to a whisper network among desperate parents who don’t want to be racked with guilt over plunking their kids in front of the TV when a meltdown is approaching, when work takes over, or when a “game” that involves dropping pom poms into a muffin tin wears thin (just me?)

Andy Yeatman, who oversees programming for the Americas for Cocomelon’s parent company Moonbug, all but confirmed my suspicion that moms and dads stuck in a pandemic probably did play a role in increased awareness around the channel. Over a Zoom call in February, Yeatman told me CoComelon picked up 33 million subscribers in 2020 alone and also has gotten consistent feedback from users about its ability to relax not just children with its catchy, repetitive melodies but also perfectionist parents. That's the point, pandemic or not. 

“We always try to include some positive values around kind of key moments in family's lives,” Yeatman says, when I asked him why he thinks the brand has taken off. He cites the brief videos that show CoComelon’s anchor, baby JJ, trying new vegetables, sharing, brushing his teeth, getting out of diapers. He tells me that emotional challenges are key—”you’ll often start to see JJ tear up because that’s a regular part of preschool, but of course there’s always a happy ending at the end of every episode.” 

Since we discovered the channel, my two-year-old regularly asks me when he can go to “baby school” like JJ (in September, fingers crossed), wants to make stuff in the blender, and has expressed a mild willingness to at least humor me by sitting on the potty. He still refuses to try new veggies, but all in a day's work.  

He does have a fondness for muffins which I attribute to another popular children’s program that’s served as an entertainment life raft during the pandemic: Super Simple Songs. The Canadian company, Super Simple, which has been run by Toronto-based creative studio Skyship Entertainment since 2015, has been around in one form or another for over a decade. It was an early YouTube adopter that focused mainly on, as the name suggests, super-simple songs as a means to teach English to children. It too has seen an boost in viewers, as parents even more so took on the role of teacher and searched for educational pastimes for their kids. 

“Around the time stay-at-home orders started to roll out globally, we definitely saw a shift in views," Skyship co-founder Morghan Fortier tells me, adding that the company experienced a 40% increase in views on YouTube as well as a spike to the mobile Super Simple app which grew to around 7,000 subscribers over the last year. “A small number compared to YouTube, but we’re really proud of it and are looking forward to building on it.” .

Unlike CoComelon, Super Simple Songs doesn’t follow a single set of characters but produces hundreds of short videos in various formats including basic 2-D and 3-D animation, stop motion, and felt puppetry. The music includes adaptations or new arrangements of public domain content as well as original songs. 

I imagine every young fan has their favorite Super Simple videos, but I tell Fortier about those that have particular resonance in my house: a gray-haired mustachioed chef who asks kids whether they know the Muffin Man, which was literally the thing that got my son to eat muffins (with hidden vegetables, heh heh). We're also always watching a purple blob who croons renditions of “Down by the Bay” into a microphone like amorphous lounge singer; kids singing about the joys of trick-or-treating; and an angular cat with giant eyes who plays peek-a-boo—an unintentional standout across the board. “That cat is kind of my spirit animal," Fortier says when I tell her I recently got lost in a Reddit thread about parents discussing the cat and how their children go wild over it. 

Before the pandemic, I’d classify my stance on screen time as “a little is fine.” I knew I didn't want to raise a slack-eyed zombie who couldn’t be taken anywhere without an iPad but —unlike some friends—I never dramatically shielded my son’s eyes with my hand from an accidental glimpse at a television in an effort to preserve his evolving frontal lobe. By the time he turned one—despite the opinion of the WHO—he’d already seen some Sesame Street, but I was firmly in control of when he watched and how much. 

But, as two weeks working from home turned into what felt like infinity, it became untenable to expect a then-14-month-old to play nicely on the floor with some wooden stacking carrots while mommy and daddy worked eight-hour days. Any guilt I had around TV, the preferred screen in my house, was shed. But I made a choice that, no matter how much or little my son watched, the programs had to be musical—i.e., no overstimulating  cartoons with storylines he didn’t yet have the tools to follow—and I had to not mind listening to or humming along the songs while working.

Those choices, it turns out, might be the trick to making screen time an affair that doesn't leave parents wringing their hands or kids bouncing off the walls. 

“Scaffolding,” is the technical term, according to Rachel Barr, PhD and professor of psychology of Georgetown University. By enjoying short programming that's musical, I'm supporting my son's media use, which is vital if education is the goal. “We’ve found in our research that when parents engage in  media that children are using, young children—three and under—are more responsive and engaged and learn more," Barr tells me. 

And although we prefer TV in our house, Barr says it's not the only way to engage a kid with a screen. “Lots of families have been using video chat to stay in contact with each other during the pandemic and have figured out games and activities that can be played virtually with young children.” She does warn that not all screens are created equal and finding balance is key—no matter how educational, no toddler needs to spend your entire workday clutching an iPad or staring at the television. 

I don't need statistics to know screen time is way up and that we might have our work cut out for us getting our kids to disconnect when this whole thing is over. But the reality is this: showing my toddler videos of a big-eyed cat playing peek-a-boo behind a plant doesn't make me a bad parent, and neither would letting him watch an “overstimulating” cartoon he can't comprehend once in a while if that's what he wanted. I can't force him to draw or build or read or run around the same socially-distant playground every waking hour for an entire year. And my husband and I aren't always available to do those things with him during the workday.

There is a downside to an excess of YouTube kids music: waking up at 3 a.m. with a song about red lights and green lights playing on loop in my brain, or not being able to concentrate on a Zoom because I'm hungry for the pizza party the mustachioed chef is organizing. 

“I've had times where I've been out for dinner and I'll mention what I do for a living and I always feel obligated to say I'm sorry," says Fortier. "Because, depending on what song's been stuck in your head for the last six to eight months, I really do apologize.”

Perrie Samotin is Glamour's digital director and the host of the podcast “What I Wore When” in partnership with iHeartRadio. Follow her on Instagram at @perriesamotin.

This story originally appeared on: Glamour - Author:Perrie Samotin