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

submitted 2 weeks 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 17 points 2 weeks ago (7 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

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 28 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] waterdog9@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

They actually did something similar when creating Sesame Street (and I think Blues Clues); the main difference being the goal was to make the educational parts the most attention grabbing, so kids with parents who just plop them in front of the TV would be more prepared for school.

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