Most recommended videos were clips from shows or movies, which typically follow a narrative. Many were compilations of episodes stitched together, or montages of short clips.
Some videos were animated nursery rhymes, typically featuring music, repetitive lyrics, and themes like personal hygiene and basic mathematical concepts.
Others were live-action programmes, where on-screen characters speak directly to the camera, engaging children with questions or prompts to repeat what is being taught.
Too fast, too colourful: Are your kids’ favourite shows good for them?
The Straits Times reviewed 200 YouTube Kids videos and analysed some of their visual features and content to find out what makes them so appealing to children.
A completely screen-free childhood feels almost impossible in today’s world. For busy parents, sometimes, the easiest way to occupy their children’s time is by turning on their favourite show.
And there are endless options. Unlike traditional television, shows from online streaming services can be played any time, on demand.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) recommends limiting screen time for children between 18 months and six years old to less than an hour a day outside school. It also advises parents to choose age-appropriate educational content carefully.
With so many options on streaming services such as YouTube Kids, Netflix and Disney+, what should children be watching? Are all shows created equal?
To find out, we looked at more than 200 videos suggested by YouTube Kids – the child-friendly version of the streaming platform – to first-time users, and spoke with experts on how to evaluate these videos meant for pre-school children.
“In general, high-stimulating media is characterised by fast-paced storytelling, quick-speaking characters, loud music or noise, brightly coloured visuals, rapid scene changes and fantastical elements,” says Associate Professor Daisy Chan, senior consultant in the Department of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine at the Singapore General Hospital.
Research indicates that such videos can affect toddlers adversely. Excessive exposure to rapidly changing images may over-stimulate the developing brain and reduce attention span in children, she added.
So what exactly is ‘pacing’ in children’s videos?
One common way to measure pacing is by looking at shot length – how long a shot lasts before cutting to the next. But other factors such as camera movement may also make a show feel faster or slower. Let’s look at some popular videos to see how this plays out.
Some children’s shows, such as Cocomelon, have faced criticism for being fast-paced and highly stimulating.
To understand pacing, we broke down seven videos of different types by shots, measuring how long each one lasted before switching.
This chart shows shot changes in the first 10 minutes of these videos. Each line represents a shot change; more lines indicate more shots and thus shorter shot lengths.
On the slower end of the seven are a Ms Rachel video, averaging 6.63 seconds per shot, and a Super Simple rhyme, with 7.37 seconds.
On the faster end are a Paw Patrol compilation, averaging 2.89 seconds per shot, and an Upin & Ipin episode, averaging 2.9 seconds per shot.
But even two videos with similar shot lengths can feel very different. Take these two clips from Cocomelon and Bluey: both have similar average shot lengths, yet the viewing experience differs.
Cocomelon animations often include camera movements that follow song beats, adding extra motion and making the video feel more fast-paced.
In contrast, Bluey, which is narrative-driven, tends to use static shots with minimal camera movement.
Changes in scenes can also influence the viewer’s perception of pace. Let’s compare clips from two cartoons, Paw Patrol and Upin & Ipin, each roughly 30 seconds long, with average shot lengths of 2.9 seconds.
In Upin & Ipin, the shots are brief but within one continuous scene, following the characters playing race cars with their friends in one location.
The Paw Patrol clip, however, covers the same duration with multiple scenes, time jumps and location changes, creating a faster, more dynamic pace.
With pacing, some level of scene change and novelty helps sustain engagement, explains Assistant Professor Tan Ai Peng, clinician-scientist at NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and principal investigator at A*STAR Institute for Human Development and Potential.
However, if the content is consistently very fast-paced, children may grow accustomed to high levels of stimulation and struggle with slower activities such as reading or imaginative play, which can start to feel less rewarding, she says.
Just nine minutes of watching a fast-paced cartoon could lower four-year-old children’s executive function right after viewing, according to a 2011 study by researchers Angeline Lillard and Jennifer Peterson at the University of Virginia. Executive function is a set of mental skills involved in self-control, working memory and flexible thinking.
A more recent analysis of children’s TV shows in 2022 by Dr Claire Essex and Professor Tim Smith from University of the Arts London reveals higher rates of situational change – frequent jumps across time, space or action that require viewers to mentally piece events together – were linked to poorer performance in executive function.
Professor Sam Wass and his team at the Institute for the Science of Early Years and Youth based in Britain are also studying how fast-paced media affects young viewers. “The makers of screen content are increasingly using fast-paced movement and sound to capture children’s attention,” he explained in a LinkedIn post in February.
When things are too fast and unpredictable, children’s brains go into “high alert” mode and activate the fight-or-flight response. This is likely why children often seem irritable after screen time, he added.
Bright, vibrant colours can heighten the excitement of fast-paced videos
Colour is another visual feature experts say can stimulate young brains.
“Young children’s brains are especially sensitive to visual contrast,” says Dr Tan from A*STAR. Bright, saturated colours activate the part of the brain called the visual cortex and help catch a child’s attention, she added.
Compared with screen content from two decades ago, today’s videos are noticeably more vivid and high-contrast – a shift driven by developers’ understanding of what holds a child’s gaze, she said.
While research on colour use in screen-based media for children is limited, Professor Anna Franklin, who studies colour perception in infants and children at Britain’s University of Sussex, notes that highly saturated colours draw children’s attention.
Content that uses a variety of colours, rather than a uniform palette, also tends to be more engaging. In a recent analysis of children’s books, her team found that colour saturation and contrasts play a key role in directing young readers’ focus.
Let’s look at how colours are used in some videos we reviewed.
We extracted the 10 most dominant colours from each video frame. One example is a Paw Patrol clip, among the most colourful videos we analysed.
To make the variations clearer, we filtered out the colours closer to grey, white or black.
Then, we mapped all the remaining hues along the colour wheel.
The results show a wide spread: reds from fire trucks, blues from the sky and water, and greens from grass and trees. Frequent location changes add to the colour variety.
By comparison, the Bluey and Upin & Ipin clips show fewer variety in colours.
When we rearrange the colours by the chroma – referring to how vibrant or saturated they are, the Paw Patrol video stands out not just for its variety but its intensity.
Children are naturally drawn to bright colours, says Dr Adrian Loh, a senior consultant psychiatrist at Promises Healthcare. Shows with bright, vibrant colours are not inherently harmful, he adds, but balance matters – especially as children are surrounded by colourful stimuli from toys and classroom materials.
“If children are only exposed to intense visuals of stimulation from the moment they wake up till the evening, then of course it leads to a lot of sensory overload, particularly when the bright colours are flashing, with a lot of intense light and colour changes,” he said.
Children’s media is by design generally brightly coloured and varied, though some videos dial up that intensity far more than others.
Screen time duration still counts: extended viewing carries risks
Regardless of how visually stimulating a video is, experts agree that prolonged screen exposure beyond recommended guidelines is harmful for children.
In January 2025, MOH launched stricter and clearer guidelines on screen use for children up to 12 years old. These include no screen exposure – even in the background – for those younger than 18 months old.
For older children, the guidelines advise keeping non-school screen use to less than one hour a day for those aged from 18 months old to six years old, and no more than two hours for those aged from seven to 12 years old.
These latest recommendations came after earlier guidelines were released in 2023, with Health Minister Ong Ye Kung saying that more decisive steps were needed. More recent research has since found stronger links between screen use and cognitive development in young children.
In particular, children’s device usage habits can affect their physical activity, social interactions and emotional well-being.
In the videos we collected, nearly half exceeded one hour, more than the recommended daily limit for pre-schoolers. Many were compilations, stitching together full episodes or short clips into one continuous stream.
“I've seen compilations that are four hours long,” says Dr Andrew Yee, assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.
You might fall into a trap where a child is basically staring at (a video) for four hours straight, and then there isn’t that space for them to process the information.
Because these videos run without breaks, it can be easy for children or caregivers to lose track of time. Unlike standalone episodes, such compilations lack natural cues to pause or stop.
Dr Yee suggests parents be intentional about screen use, though he acknowledges it can be difficult. “Parents are busy. I’m a parent myself, so I understand it’s really tough,” he says.
For the same duration, he says watching a full hour-long movie may be better than a compilation of short clips. “If you have multiple short narratives, you don’t process much. With one narrative, kids are working their memory. They have to remember what’s happening to the characters… and make sense of the narrative.”
Most of the videos in our analysis were compilations and more than one hour long
The chart excludes one outlier video that lasted more than 10 hours.
Some parents are also growing wary about the type of content their children encounter, much of it surfaced by algorithms on platforms.
Account director Chee Shi Jing, 33, noticed that his five-year-old son often got impatient when picking videos on YouTube Kids. The boy was constantly distracted by recommendations that appeared whenever a clip was paused, eager to watch something that seemed more interesting. But many of the recommended videos encouraged passive viewing and offered little educational value, Mr Chee said.
A year ago, Mr Chee switched to Netflix and Disney+, which have slower-paced and older shows such as Winnie The Pooh.
Instead of letting his son choose from recommended clips, he now encourages him to watch episodes in sequence.
“We see that there's improvement, because he’s learning how to be patient,” said Mr Chee.
Responding to questions about how content is curated for YouTube Kids, Dr Garth Graham, director and global head of YouTube Health, says the platform’s algorithm is designed to “promote high-quality content that supports child development”.
He says that YouTube worked with third-party experts in fields like child development, emerging media and digital well-being to create “quality principles” for kids and family content, which guide recommendations on both YouTube and YouTube Kids.
He defines high quality content for children as that which encourages caring for self and others, learning and inspiring curiosity, creativity, play, and a sense of imagination, along with building life skills and experiences.
These include videos featuring hobbies, tutorials, sing-alongs, or content about milestones like a first day at school or a trip to the dentist.
“YouTube has also published a set of low quality principles to reduce the visibility of less desirable videos,” he says. “Content that is heavily commercial, sensational, or encourages negative behaviours is less likely to be recommended by the algorithm, even if it complies with general Community Guidelines.”
Dr Graham adds that the YouTube Kids app lets parents approve specific content or select from curated age-appropriate categories. They can also turn off the search function, block videos or channels, and set screen time limits.
The upside: Can watching any kids’ shows be educational?
When screen use stays within recommended guidelines, watching certain programmes can have positive outcomes.
Some shows can support cognitive development, introducing concepts like counting, letters and basic maths, while also encouraging imaginative play and creativity. They can boost language skills by exposing children to new words and vocabulary.
Others can promote physical development – for instance, by encouraging movement through sports or activities like jumping or dancing.
Certain shows may also support social and emotional development, modelling positive behaviours such as sharing with friends, expressing feelings and communicating with others.
Even when educational content is not explicitly stated, children can still pick up lessons that can complement what they learn in school, says Dr Loh.
But this also depends on how content is presented. Dr Yee from NTU explains that children must first pay attention to understand and retain information for it to reach long-term memory. Frequent scene changes may not give them enough time to do this.
The most effective programmes embed learning within the narrative, making it part of the story’s progression. For example, while not aimed at younger children, Dr Yee notes that in the Harry Potter fantasy novel and movie series, “without friendship… Harry Potter wouldn’t be able to defeat (villain) Voldemort”. “Friendship is central to the storyline.”
Prof Chan from SGH also cautions that media is often a one-way communication channel, so children still need real-world interactions to learn socio-emotional and communication skills.
Watching fantastical content – shows featuring elements that do not follow real-world rules, like flying, disappearing or passing through walls – may hinder attention and executive functioning.
A 2025 study by Dr Essex, Prof Smith and their colleagues found that 18-month-olds learnt a task better after watching a cartoon without physically impossible events, compared with one containing them. Even very young children expect objects to behave in certain ways and are sensitive to such events, explained the researchers. When children watch fantastical scenarios, they use extra mental effort trying to make sense of them, leaving fewer cognitive resources for learning afterward.
The biggest tip: Watch together and stay informed
The best scenario is when parents view shows alongside their children or are aware of what they are watching.
“Parents can encourage independent thinking, they can enable the child to see something from different perspectives and explain what’s happening,” says Prof Chan.
Experts also warn against using screens to calm children during tantrums or manage uncomfortable emotions, such as boredom, sadness or anger. When children rely on shows as their primary way to cope, they may quiet down temporarily, but miss the chance to develop healthier strategies for regulating those feelings over time, said Dr Yee.
In the long run, children may not be able to handle a range of emotional situations.
Choose content that matches children’s interests and developmental stage, advised researchers from University of the Arts London and Queen Mary University of London, including Prof Smith, Dr Essex and Professor Rachael Bedford.
“Parents are experts on their own children,” the team said. “Some children may enjoy programmes aimed at slightly older children, while others prefer shows with lots of repetition that help them become familiar with the characters and storyline.”
Ultimately, experts recommend choosing content judiciously, not just based on popularity.
“Content that is curated and has a learning objective would be beneficial,” says Prof Chan, adding that content that is only popular may not always be educational.
Explore the list of all 236 videos we watched in the table below.
