Episodes of overstimulation flood kids media
Next to candy or dessert, TV was always a special treat for me as a child, and I found myself glued to the screen whenever I had the rare opportunity to watch a show or movie. Today, it shocks me when kids can barely sit through a 20 minute episode of “Cocomelon”– although I can hardly blame them. The media thrown in front of kids’ faces as a “distraction” or calming device is increasingly poor in quality, and most prominently, level of stimulation.
Instead of having access to hundreds of episodes at my fingertips as a kid, it required more effort to hunt for the right DVD from the library, finding the perfect film to watch for a movie night. As a result, my parents made sure that the content I was watching was meaningful. Whether I was learning about wildlife from the “Wild Kratts” or going on adventures with Dora, I always felt as if I was walking away with greater knowledge, in addition to being entertained for no longer than 30 minutes.
Today, each show or movie follows the same formula of bright colors, unharmonious noises and non-existent plots. I find it difficult, even as a high school student with adequate visual analysis skills from IB Lang and Lit, to derive any meaningful information from them, and can hardly remember what I watched after the episode is complete. This seems to be the same phenomenon as scrolling on your phone and having no recollection of the video you watched two scrolls ago; and if kids are entering this cycle three years into their lives, it will be difficult to break when it is all they are used to.
With the target audience being our next generation, kids’ media should be aimed at shaping them into better people, rather than mass producing slop that has no substance or plot. If I had been shown “Cocomelon” or “Peppa Pig” as a child I doubt I would be able to recall any impactful themes years later, as I can with the media I was shown growing up.
It feels like these shows and movies have one common goal: to place a distraction in front of the kid. Ironically, this level of stimulation only shortens their attention span with every watch, and there is an issue when kids are easily distracted from the distraction itself. As a result, kids have increasingly less patience for activities below their usual level of stimulation, leading them to reject low-stimulation activities such as reading, crafting or playing with toys. These hobbies that shaped my childhood become absent from theirs with every additional minute of high-stimulation that pounds their brains.
Though I never thought I would be beefing with “Cocomelon” or saying “back in my day” with salty pride, seeing present day kids’ media has given me an unexpected appreciation for what I was exposed to as a child. I believe making a shift toward media with softer music, calming visuals and meaningful storytelling will shape our next generation into patient, emotionally intelligent thinkers.
