Over the past couple of years, the TikTok trend “sad beige moms,” coined by creator Hayley DeRoche, has skyrocketed. These moms will paint their child’s entire bedroom and play area a neutral palette, including their toys. However, research has shown that this lack of color could delay their child’s cognitive development.
According to the National Library of Medicine, “The underlying motivation for these colorful and sensory-rich environments is to elicit the positive, and often crucial, developmental effects that have been found to occur when sensory enrichment is provided during early stages of development.”
What often grabs a child’s attention is a contrast in the color palette of an object. One example of this could be as simple as black and white. However, the neutral color palette of a “sad beige mom’s” home does not attract the child to play with any of her toys.
“I would assume if you kept a kid in a neutral or beige room for a long time, that would cause some sensory deprivation with vision,” Del Val psychology teacher Rod Jensen said.
However, an environment that is too contrasting can have a negative effect on children. When overstimulated, a child can have difficulty focusing on one thing at a time and feel stressed.
“It [a colorful environment] might overwhelm them,” Jensen said. “With sensory adaptation, you get used to your environment and you ignore things that are unchanging. If nothing is ever changing and then you go into a vibrant room, I would think that would be pretty distracting and hard to concentrate on one thing at a time.”
In a 2016 study, 15 pre-schoolers, ages 38-52 months, were examined while having them play on a colorful surface versus a non-colorful one. The results of the study showed that the colorful surface disrupted the children from their structured play and affected their engagement. In classroom settings, it would be better to have the neutral environment rather than at home. The colorful classroom gives too much for a child to look at and makes it difficult for them to focus on the task at hand.
“Wouldn’t you want your kid to have the things that might be distracting where you can help them deal with it, rather than when you can’t help them deal with it?” Jensen said.
The “beige moms” are not nearly as impactful as Romanian orphanages, however, this comparison shows an example of what the lasting effects can be when a child does not receive adequate stimulation and care to survive. These children would lay in cribs all day except when being fed, diapered or bathed. When reporters first stepped foot into the building, all they heard was silence. The children there had learned that their cries would get them no attention.
“When you look at the Romanian orphanages where the kids weren’t touched, weren’t played with, weren’t shown colors, weren’t read to, some of those kids died and didn’t develop the way they were supposed to,” Jensen said.
When neglect or lack of stimulation to an affect occur, the brain will cut neuron connections in order to work more efficiently in a process called pruning. The more stimulation a person has, the more synapses are built and can become permanent. However, the less stimulation a person has, the less connections the brain will keep.
“There is pruning that happens at two, seven and 13 where if you don’t use certain neural pathways, they’re going to get cut,” Jensen said.
When following the trends you see online, there can be more lasting affects. Such as the Tide Pod or Black Out challenges, where people died from trying to get likes on a video, and now the “beige moms” are possibly compromising the cognitive abilities of their children. The fact of the matter is that people want a sense of belonging in their local and online communities. By following these trends, they are able to relate to conversations and gain positive feedback from a larger audience.
“It shows how much we are like lemmings; we like a fad to follow or a trend to follow,” Jensen said. “It’s too bad when it’s something like the Tide Pod challenge where some kids actually got hurt.”
