Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Reg No- 06
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Tuesday | 14 January 2025 | Epaper

Dark reality of children’s entertainment in You Tube

Published : Thursday, 12 December, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 490
Major Tanvir Hossain, psc
My child loves watching cartoon channels in You Tube. From very early age she started watching the famous cartoon channels like Cocomelon, Moonbug, LoLo-kids, Bebefinn, Masha and the Bear etc. As time progressed, she increased her screen time for watching various cartoon channels. Initially she watched cartoon in her parent's tab and now she also watches those contents in other devices like Laptop, smart TV etc. Due to our busy life as a middle-class working parents, we spend less quality-time with our small kids. But when I saw my kid is suffering from delayed speech, then I took her to a Child Specialist who recognized her problems and suggested me to reduce her screen time in various devices and increase her play time with other toys and kids. I was curious and asked the doctor why he suggested me such an opinion, then the doctor said to me that the children's cartoon in You Tube is very much harmful for small kids specially for kids aged below two. Those cartoon channels try to grab kids' attention by applying various nefarious business techniques and as a result kids suffer from various illness like delayed speech, slow cognitive development, limited attention, anti-social behavior, ADHD etc.
As I was curious to find out more about these popular kids' channel in You Tube, then I soon found out lots of published articles and research works in this field. Most of those study was conducted to determine the effect of those cartoon channels on kids physical and mental health. To my utter surprise I found out that almost all the study reveals that there were hardly any positive benefits of watching those cartoon channels in You Tube. Most of the researchers opined that for pre-preschooler and kids below the age two should not watch cartoon channels in You Tube as those channels show very colorful, over synced music added nursery rhymes repeated over and over again to entertain kids and grab their full attention. As a result, the small kids while watching those cartoons don't even look towards anything else and don't listen to their parents. If parents try to limit their screen time, then some kids show their impulsive behavior.

Furthermore, as those channels are very popular amongst kids worldwide, the channels face tremendous challenge amongst themselves to create more alluring lullaby type songs having too bright and colorful background that are not good for children's viewing. But in order to generate more views and in turn by generating more revenues those channels try to optimize their profit in expense of risking children's physical and mental wellbeing. Some Child Psychologists have even renamed those contents as "Digital Drugs" or "Digital Dopamine". It is a great concern worldwide that those channels have expanded their operation by producing contents in twenty-five different languages. A study shows that the You Tube based cartoon channels have a market worldwide and kids of almost all the continents watches those contents daily. For this unprecedented growth, these channels also produce contents having duration of three minutes to five hours no-stop. In addition, these channels have expanded their operation in Netflix also. That means kids can now watch their favorite cartoon shows in Netflix as well. So, this is pretty evident that these kid's entertainment based educational channels are very harmful for small kids who needs their parents' guidance while watching any content in You Tube or Netflix.
So, what can be the real time solution for the problem I just mentioned so far. Some Child Psychologists suggested that small children aged below two years should be allowed to watch Television for limited time daily under supervision of their parents instead of You Tube. Watching cartoons and fun contents in You Tube should not be an option to soothe small babies or keeping them engaged during their meal time. Rather small kids should be given more playing toys and given more time to play in theme park or visiting zoo regularly with their parents and siblings. Even for kids aged more than two years should not be given free access to watch cartoons in You Tube or any other platform at their own. Finally reducing screen time and increasing kids playing time with toys or in the play ground is considered a much safer and better option by experts. Parents should also realize that a child in its formidable years should be cared more as he or she experiences rapid and critical development in their physical, cognitive, social and emotional growth.

The writer is an army officer



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