From Mickey to McQueen:

Do children's videos do more harm than good?

by Asoka Weerasinghe

Since the advent of television and videos, children have gained immense joy and entertainment watching them. Some television programs claim to be educational, therefore providing not only entertainment for the child, but also education. Thus, mums and dads feed and wash their children and place them in front of the television and get on with their chores, quite satisfied that the children are not only quiet and content, but that they are also learning.

Walt Disney

Walt Disney, for example, provided almost all the television and video material which helped keep toddlers quiet and happy during the 20th century. He gave immense joy to children with his popular characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy.

Children spend a great deal of time watching television and videos

However, he was not an educationist and some critics say that there is no educational value in his productions. Others condemn the violence in cartoons such as Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny; they feel that such films should not be shown to children. However, full length films such as Jungle Book and Lion King have provided entertainment to children as well as adults.

Baby Einstein

Another recent Disney production, which was subjected to much criticism, was the Baby Einstein series, which was directed at children aged three to 36 months.

The Baby Einstein Company was founded in 1996 by stay-at-home mum and former teacher Julie Aigner-Clark at her home in Georgia. She, along with her husband, Bill Clark, invested $18,000 of their savings on the initial product, and subsequently in February 2000 sold 80 percent of the company they formed titled ‘Baby Einstein Company’ to Walt Disney Company. They have brought out productions under a wide range of themes. Titles currently available include Baby Bach (1999), Baby Mozart (1998), Baby Monet: Discovering The Seasons (2005), Lullaby Time (2007) and Baby Shakespeare (1999). The CDs are available in Sri Lanka.

CBeebies

CBeebies is the brand the BBC uses for programs aimed at children under six years of age. The brand was first launched on February 11, 2002. The program is available in Sri Lanka and the channel won many awards for it.

It won BAFTA Children's Awards every year from 2002 to 2009 (apart from 2003), including Best Pre-school Live Action Series Awards in 2002, 2004, 2005 and 2008. It also won the Best Schools Programme – 0 - 5 years awards (or equivalent) from the Royal Television Society from 2004 to 2007. The international CBeebies channel is advertisement-free and is wholly owned by BBC Worldwide. The first international launch for the CBeebies channel took place in India in May 2007. The channel is available all over the world including Sri Lanka. Mr. Maker, Waybuloos and Night Garden are some of the shows in the CBeebies program.

Barney

Barney CDs, popular in Sri Lanka too, were created in 1987 by Sheryl Leach of Dallas, Texas. She came up with the idea for the program while considering TV shows that she felt would be educational and appealed to her son. Leach brought together a team which created a series of home videos, Barney and the Backyard Gang. Later Barney was joined by characters such as Baby Bop, B.J., and Riff.

The title character Barney is a purple dinosaur (anthropomorphic Tyrannosaurus) who conveys educational messages through song and dance routines, and projects a friendly, optimistic attitude. Since September 2009, the production of the Barney series seems to have paused.

The series opens with the theme song. Suddenly Barney comes to life from a plush doll, transforming into the ‘real Barney'; that is how he appears to the children in their imagination. The main plots centre around school and places outside the school such as the zoo.

Barney closes with the ‘I Love You’ song, much loved by the children. When they sing this with Barney, they hug each other and their parents and grandparents who play with them. Finally, Barney dissolves into his original stuffed form.

Although these shows have been also criticised for their lack of educational value, researchers have concluded that episodes contain a great deal of age-appropriate educational material, calling the program a “model of what pre-school television should be”.

Thomas and Friends

Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends is a British children's television series. It is based on The Railway Series of books by Reverend W.V. Awdry and his son Christopher Awdry. These books deal with the adventures of a group of anthropomorphised trains and road vehicles who lived on the fictional Island of Sodor. The books were based on stories Awdry related to entertain his son Christopher during his recovery from measles. Many of the stories are based on Awdry's personal experiences.

First ‘Thomas’ was broadcast on the ITV network in September 1984. In 2000, it was renamed 'Thomas and Friends'. This series was shot on 35mm film. The first 12 series were filmed at Shepperton Studios, England between 1984 and 2008, with production now in CGI at Nitrogen Studios in Canada from 2009 onward.

Reading to children is recommended

Many businesses have been eager to cash in on the worldwide popularity of the series. ‘Thomas'-themed merchandise has appeared in almost every form imaginable, from books and magazines, through a vast series of models, to duvet covers, cutlery, soft drinks and even spaghetti shapes, birthday cakes and T-shirts.

McQueen

Lightning McQueen, typically referred to by his surname McQueen, and occasionally called ‘Stickers’ is the protagonist of the 2006 animated Pixar film Cars, and its sequel Cars 2. He was named after Pixar animator Glenn McQueen who died of skin cancer in 2002; it was erroneously believed after the film debuted that the name was influenced by actor and noted racing buff Steve McQueen.

McQueen is based on generic NASCAR vehicles, but with design influences from the Mazda Miata and Dodge Viper. Late in the film, he is painted much like the Chevrolet Corvette C1. In the beginning of the film Cars, Lightning McQueen is a skilled but arrogant, self-centred rookie racer. Hoping to be the first rookie to win the Piston Cup trophy and gain a lucrative endorsement deal from Dinoco Oil, he finishes in a three-way tie with perennial runner-up Chick Hicks and veteran Strip “The King” Weathers.

On route to California for a tie-breaker race, he becomes detoured off the US Route 66 in New Mexico because of The Delinquent Road Hazards and finds himself in Radiator Springs, a nearly abandoned town which saw its livelihood largely disappear due to the construction of Interstate 40 decades ago. McQueen accidentally destroys the town's main road because of his fear of the sheriff (he mistook the old cruiser's backfiring for gunshots). The town's judge sentences McQueen to repair the road before he may return to Los Angeles, where the three-way tie-breaker race is being held.

Over the course of his stay in the town, he comes to form friendships with the residents of the town. He falls in love with a former city-dwelling attorney named Sally, and gains a deep respect and reverence for the town's judge and doctor, an ex-race car named Doc Hudson. These experiences lead McQueen to understand the importance of friendship and love, and that fame is not the most important thing in life. Mater, an old crane truck, is another friend he finds there. The rest of the story is interesting and worth watching.

Conclusion

Disney was considered to be the greatest biologist because he gave souls to animals. Awdry and McQueen should be considered as great engineers because they gave souls to locomotives and cars.

Although these TV programs and videos give immense joy and entertainment to children, parents should also be aware of the criticism and adverse comments about some of these programs. In May 2006, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission against the Baby Einstein Company and the Brainy Baby Company, and Baby First TV.

They cited the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation that children under two should be discouraged from watching television at all. A study showed that only six percent of parents are aware of that recommendation, while 49 percent of parents think educational videos such as those mentioned are important for the intellectual development of children.

In one of the latest studies on the effects of popular videos, especially for infants, such as the ‘Baby Einstein’ and ‘Brainy Baby’ series, researchers have found that these products may be doing more harm than good and that they may actually delay language development in toddlers.

Research carried out at the University of Washington found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new words than babies who never watched videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies eight to 16 months old, the age at which language skills start to form. It's not the first blow to baby videos, and likely won't be the last.

Mounting evidence suggests that passive screen sucking (staring at the screen for many hours while accomplishing little of value), while not helping children learn, could also set back their development. Previous studies have shown, for example, that babies learn faster and better from a native speaker of a language when they are interacting with that speaker instead of watching the same speaker talk on a video screen.

Even watching a live person speak to you via television is not the same thing as having that person in front of you. This growing evidence led the Academy to issue its recommendation in 1999 that children under two years old should not watch any television. The authors of the new study might suggest reading instead: children who received daily reading or story-telling time with their parents showed an increase in language skills.

Experts worry that the proliferation of these products will continue to displace the one thing that babies need in the first months of life - face to face time with human beings. “Every interaction with your child is meaningful. Time is precious in those early years, and the newborn is watching you, and learning from everything you do”. So talk to them; they're listening.

Those who are older can enjoy television and video characters and stories, but parents must ensure that this is done in moderation.