It's best for children under 2 years to have no screen time other than video-chatting. You can be a role-model for healthy screen habits for babies and toddlers. Avoid having screens on in the background. They can distract children or show distressing images.
Background Noise Is Harmful to Learning
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children under the age of 2 not watch any television.
Television viewing in babies under 18 months of age should be avoided, other than video chatting. To help encourage brain, language, and social development, spend more time playing, reading, and being physically active with your baby.
Causes of overstimulation in babies
Every baby is different, but some of the things that could overwhelm your little one include: Environment. Some babies might get overwhelmed by noisy, crowded, brightly lit, or colorful places. Excessive screen use.
Blue light can penetrate deep into the retina of the eye and can damage the light-sensitive cells. The ideal distance of watching TV is considered to be 8 to 10 feet. The general rule of thumb is to be at least 5 times the distance from the screen as the screen is wide.
With quick scenes (lasting no more than 2 seconds), fast camera movements, dancing subtitles, and several sound effects playing at once (music, talking, laughing), Cocomelon could be overstimulating for some children.
Television Can Impact Brain Development
Evidence has shown that TV or any screen media can have lasting, negative effects on a new baby's reading skills, language development, and short-term memory. Your baby doesn't necessarily need to be watching TV directly to be affected.
Before the age of 2, newborn watching tv can also contribute to problems relating with sleep and attention as well, as they have a lasting effect on the child's language development, analyzing capabilities and memory. Even simply having the TV on in the background is enough to motivate these issues.
“While appropriate television viewing at the right age can be helpful for both children and parents, excessive viewing before age 3 has been shown to be associated with problems of attention control, aggressive behavior and poor cognitive development.
Kids younger than 18 months shouldn't have screen time, except for video-chatting alongside adults. Limited, high-quality viewing (with an adult) is recommended for kids 18 to 24 months, and from 2 to 5 years, screen use should be capped at an hour a day. School-age kids need consistent limits, too.
Good evidence suggests that screen viewing before age 18 months has lasting negative effects on children's language development, reading skills, and short term memory. It also contributes to problems with sleep and attention.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that babies younger than 18 months get no screen time at all. The exception to this rule is video chatting with grandparents or other family members or friends, which is considered quality time interacting with others.
Background noise makes it more difficult for a baby to localize where a sound or voice is coming from thus making it more difficult for a baby to focus.
Some experts think that viewing Cocomelon is absolutely fine for young children. Nicole Beurkens, a psychologist in Grand Rapids, finds Cocomelon stimulating but not overwhelming.
Studies report a link between TV and language development in young children. The more time kids spend watching television, the more slowly they learn to talk.
This study by Duch et. al. also found that children who watched more than 2 hours of TV per day had increased odds of low communication scores. This is why the American Association of Pediatricians recommend no screen time at all until children are 18-24 months old.
By age 1, nearly 40 percent of the babies were watching more than three hours of television a day, the researchers said. Three-month-olds who watched more than three hours of TV daily had higher fussiness scores compared with those who watched less than one hour a day.
In order to prevent serious health issues, anyone and everyone, including parents, should avoid kissing babies. Due to the rise in cases of RSV and other illnesses, it's extremely important for all individuals to be aware of the dangers of kissing babies.
Reading together when babies are as young as 4 months old increases the chances that parents continue reading to babies as they get older. Beginning early is important because the roots of language are developing in a baby's brain even before he can talk!
“Cocomelon is so awful for children. It's over stimulating which can delay a lot of developmental milestones," one mum claimed. Another mum shared on Reddit that her little one was so addicted to CoComelon, she would tantrum to the point of harming herself when she wasn't allowed to watch it.
With packages of nursery rhymes and original songs that can range from 30 minutes to a over an hour, CoComelon is designed to be played for long stretches of time, and thus act as the perfect torture device.
Cocomelon leans heavily into the power of repetition, and anyone with toddlers will tell you that repetition is the fastest way to capture their fascination. Cocomelon also features rapid transitions.
Exposure to screens reduces babies' ability to read human emotion and control their frustration. It also detracts from activities that help boost their brain power, like play and interacting with other children.