This weekend, I binge-watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (I live to party, I know.) The beloved children’s show starring Fred Rogers and his many zip-up sweaters (made by his mom!) turns 50 this month, so I thought it’d be a good time to introduce my five-year-old daughter to the man whose words still resonate, maybe now more than ever.
As a kid, I spent many summers sitting in my grandmother’s den, watching Mister Rogers try to whistle, demonstrate how to use an eraser, and talk about the difficult parts of friendship. While the show never had the energy and zaniness of Sesame Street, it offered human-to-human authenticity, something I can sure appreciate now. In a reassuring voice, Mister Rogers would look at the child on the other end of the TV screen, the one whose world may have felt big and uncertain and maybe a little scary, and say: It’s you I like. Not the things that hide you. It’s you yourself. It’s you. How wonderful.
Still, when I played the episodes on Prime Video this weekend, I was fully prepared for my kid to melt off the sofa and announce that she’s so bored and can she please, please, please watch Luna Petunia instead? She’s already been indoctrinated by the manic behemoth that is today’s children’s programming, where everything is fast-paced and flashing with bright colors. A lot of it is brain candy, and the moment you’re over one show, there are hundreds more waiting. Would she be able to sit through a show featuring one middle-aged dude who spends a good chunk of time sitting on a bench untying and re-tying his shoes?
Surprisingly, she did. It’s probably because she’s a huge Daniel Tiger fan and got a kick out of pointing out the homes of characters she knows (“Oh! That’s Prince Wednesday’s house! That’s where Lady Elaine lives!”), but she liked it, and we watched one episode after another.
As an adult, I had forgotten how remarkably slow the show was. For instance, in Episode No. 1656, Mister Rogers walks “up” the step to his front door, and then “down.” And then “up” and then “down” again. Then he waits for a while for Mr. McFeely to arrive and when he does, he asks Mr. McFeely to step up and then down, too. The climactic arc of the show is when the two men visit a shopping mall where they go up and down an escalator, and up and down an elevator. I started getting fidgety and twitchy. “I once sat through this?” I asked myself. Meanwhile, I noticed that my daughter had started doing a puzzle on the floor and then quietly got up to practice the piano, something she has never done unprompted, ever. Usually, when she’s watching something, she sits on the sofa with her mouth open and it takes me saying her name eight times from two inches away from her face for her to snap out of zombie-viewing mode.
There’s something about Mister Rogers, I am telling you.
And it’s not just me. Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician in Seattle, has researched the way different forms of screen time affects kids’ ability to learn, and found exposing young children to frenetic animation or fast-moving video “conditions the mind to a reality that doesn’t exist.” Christakis gave a TEDX talk on this topic.
So we’ve had for a while, what we call the overstimulation hypothesis, which is that prolonged exposure to this rapid image change during this critical window of brain development would precondition the mind to expect high levels of input, and that would lead to inattention in later life. So you watched enough Baby Einstein day on the farm as a baby and when you go to a farm as a school-age child it’s boring; it’s too slow: how come there’s no sheep suddenly popping into my face? How come there’s no marionette going back and forth? Why do I have to walk from here to there?
Christakis found that the more television that kids watch before the age of three, the more likely they are to have attention problems by the time they start school. (His work actually helped shape the recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics to not allow children under age 2 to engage with screens, and to limit the screen time of children under age 3.) Now, when kids can see a new surprise come out of a plastic egg every three seconds, it all kind of makes sense.
But Christakis also found that “educational, slower-paced programming imposed no contributing risk of attention problems.” And that’s where Mister Rogers comes in. It has a slowly unfolding narrative. The scenes change only about three times in every episode. It sends good messages. In one study of 5,000 children, those who watched such “pro-social” programs were kinder and more tolerant. Another long-term study that followed children from preschool through high school found that Mister Rogers and Sesame Street both had positive effects. This weekend, we watched a bit of Mister Rogers and then it became background noise. For a kid, it’s enjoyable and educational, but it’s not addictive. As a parent, I approve. Boring rules.
While there is no other show the matches the pace of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—today, most kids’ programs must be internationally scalable and lend themselves to merchandising opportunities—I’d say Ruby’s Studio has some of the same human-to-human appeal. And Daniel Tiger, of course, teaches the concepts Mister Rogers always emphasized, like kindness, patience and letting yourself feel feelings. I’m always on the lookout for other high quality shows.
If you’re looking for some nostalgia, check this out. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, all this week, PBS will air an episode of Daniel Tiger, then follow it up with the corresponding episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood that inspired it. The double feature episodes will begin today, Monday, February 26, and end Friday, March 2.