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Cocomelon is designed to be addictive (www.youtube.com)

submitted 16 hours ago by Wawe@lemmy.world to c/parenting@lemmy.world

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I though that Cocomelon videos are just dumb videos to keep children distracted, but I didn't know that they are purposefully designed to keep children hooked. What's your stance on their videos?

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[–] Maestro@fedia.io 6 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

A while back there was an interesting article comparing Bluey and Cocomelon: https://www.readtrung.com/p/why-i-love-bluey-and-hate-cocomelon

[–] Wawe@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Thanks for sharing! It was interesting (and horrifying) read!

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Once a month, children are brought to [a London studio], one at a time, and shown a handful of episodes to figure out exactly which parts of the shows are engaging and which are tuned out.

For anyone older than 2 years old, the team deploys a whimsically named tool: the Distractatron.

It’s a small TV screen, placed a few feet from the larger one, that plays a continuous loop of banal, real-world scenes — a guy pouring a cup of coffee, someone getting a haircut — each lasting about 20 seconds. Whenever a youngster looks away from the Moonbug show to glimpse the Distractatron, a note is jotted down.

“It’s not super interesting, what’s on the Distractatron,” said Maurice Wheeler, who runs the research group. “But if they aren’t fully focused, they might go, ‘Oh, what’s that?’ and kind of drift over. We can see what they’re looking at and the exact moment when they got distracted.”

What a waste of all lives involved.