When Disney this week offered a full refund on its Baby Einstein DVDs, campaigners celebrated what they saw as a climbdown – but did parents ever truly believe the brain-boosting claims made for such products, asks FIONOLA MEREDITH
WHEN Baby Einstein videos were launched in 1997, they were sold as powerful brain-boosters for babies, combining “visual and linguistic experiences that facilitate the development of the brain” and “contributing to brain capacity”. It seemed that all you had to do was sit your baby down in front of Baby Einstein, with its bright, colourful patterns and synthesizer versions of Mozart classics, and hey presto, you’d soon have a tiny prodigy on your hands.
Grateful parents rushed to buy because, as this was an educational experience, they could now park their kids in front of a flickering screen without the usual sneaking sense of guilt. The product became a worldwide success, generating about €200 million a year in sales. Even the then president, George W Bush, put his questionable imprimatur on the brain-boosting brand, lauding Baby Einstein in his January 2007 State of the Union address.
But this week it was reported that Disney, the company behind Baby Einstein, is offering a full cash refund to anyone who bought one of its DVDs in the past five years. So is this a tacit admission that, however much parents and manufacturers might wish it was the case, DVDs can’t make kids smarter?
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC), a US-based advocacy group which has consistently challenged Disney over the DVDs, certainly seems to think so. It says the move is a direct result of its pressure (including a threat of legal action) over “false and deceptive marketing of baby videos”, adding that “now parents who purchased Baby Einstein DVDs, mistakenly believing the videos would make their babies smarter, can recoup their money”.
But Disney has angrily rejected the CCFC’s claims, accusing campaign director Susan Linn of attempting to “twist and spin a simple customer satisfaction action into a false admission of guilt”. Disney, which in recent years has toned its marketing way down and is no longer making grandiose claims about Baby Einstein’s amazing effect on neural and cognitive brain pathways, insists that customers still “find value” in its products.
Certainly, the evidence doesn’t look good for the beneficial effects of Baby Einstein and other similar products. Researchers at the University of Washington found that for every hour per day a child spent watching baby DVDs, youngsters understood six to eight fewer words than children who weren’t sitting in front of a screen. In one of the most extensive reviews of its kind, Dr Dimitri Christakis, a US-based paediatrician, claimed the sensory overload of colours and sounds provided by brain-training shows may be at least partly to blame for the rapid increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the past 20 years. And when Dr Miriam Stoppard was asked to help launch Baby Einstein in the UK, she was quick to refuse, concerned that such products offer “no real benefit to babies and give parents a false notion that watching television can improve a child’s intelligence”.
But do most parents really believe that Baby Einstein and its ilk make their children clever?
“Of course not,” laughs Siobhan Hanway, a mother of two pre-school children from Co Antrim, who confesses to having a Baby Wordsworth DVD (the word-learning version of Baby Einstein) in her kids’ collection. “You’d have to be pretty gullible to think that. It’s a bit of a joke that parents are supposedly ‘rocked’ by the idea that these DVDs aren’t going to turn their children into geniuses. It just makes you feel slightly less bad when you stick it on the DVD player than, say, SpongeBob SquarePants. You feel a bit more wholesome about yourself as you tiptoe away to have a quiet cup of coffee.”
Many other parents discussing the issue online are equally wry and self-aware. “Well, I for one am going to demand my money back,” quips one. “The essay my three-year-old gave me on Freud’s concept of the Id was absolute garbage.”
Child psychologist Colman Noctor even admits to feeling a modicum of sympathy for Disney, which will doubtless be inundated with requests for refunds. “It’s only when these products are used as a digital babysitter, a substitute for reciprocal contact, that problems arise,” he says. “If you’re picking up your child, swinging them in the air, playing with them and otherwise interacting with them, then a bit of Baby Einstein on top of that is fine. Just as long as it’s a complementary thing – TV is never a substitute for the enrichment of person-to-person contact, especially for the under-twos, when language development is so important.”
So perhaps Disney isn’t wrong when it claims that customers still “find value” in its products. Most parents took the whole quasi-scientific neuron-boosting schtick with a healthy pinch of salt. The real value was, and perhaps still is, the brief respite the DVDs offered from the intensity of caring for a toddler. So if parents do decide to get that refund, they might as well spend it on SpongeBob after all – the effects on those neural and cognitive pathways will probably be much the same.
Or, better still, buy a book.
BRAIN BOOSTERS OR SCREEN BREAKS?
Left Brain and Right Brain DVDs, from Brainy Baby, claim to work in tandem to develop both hemispheres of the brain. The left-brain version focuses on logic, patterns, letters and numbers, while the right-brain disc works on creative thinking , art and drawing, imagination and intuition. Both come with a classical music soundtrack which is de rigueur in infant brain-training, possibly trading on the received wisdom that listening to Mozart makes you clever.
Baby Van Gogh aims to take one of history's most influential creative geniuses and make him accessible for children aged one to four. The one-eared artist is here represented by a blue sock puppet and the DVD includes footage of Van Gogh's most recognised paintings as well as music by Brahms, Ravel, Strauss and Tchaikovsky. "Now to see if she turns out artistic," writes one hopeful customer reviewer.
Baby Shakespeare offers babies and toddlers 12 common words that can be found within the rich context of classic poems and the beauty of nature, presented by Custard the Dragon (who realli-o truli-o has daggers on his toes). Parents may be relieved to find there are no Shakespearean catlings or bodikins here – "grass", "tree" and "train" are about as challenging as this word-journey gets, and all to a stirring musical backdrop by Beethoven.
