Wrecking Ball: Youtube Kids

It might be very shocking to see an article written about how terrible Youtube Kids is. “What could possibly be wrong with something so innocent,” you might be asking. All will be revealed in a short time.

 First off, YouTube Kids provides little to no educational value for children. Sean M., a developmental researcher, wrote that YouTube Kids “represents a genuine threat to children’s emotional and cognitive development.” When looking at some of the content on the platform, the reader could easily understand why he said this. The platform is full of “Baby sensory videos,” videos of cute “characters” with vibrant and eye-catching colors, dancing around the screen aimlessly. Some of even the ‘better’ content pales in comparison to something like Sesame Street. Oftentimes, the ‘content’ in these videos includes characters (live-action or animated) running around doing various visually-interesting tasks with little semblance of a story or a message for the children. Not only is the content useless, but oftentimes it is in clear violation of YouTube’s own terms of service, which are supposedly ‘more strict’ given that the content is specifically for kids. A few examples of real Youtube Kids video titles include, ‘Minecraft school shooting,’ ‘NAKED HULK LOSES HIS PANTS’ and ’BLOODY ELSA: Frozen Elsa’s Arm is Broken by Spiderman.’ There is a disturbing amount of graphic content of various natures surrounding the character Elsa from the popular Disney movie Frozen. 

This issue has been ongoing since the dawn of the creation of Youtube Kids, and Youtube has barely tried to fix it. But in the opinion of the Author, it is impossible to have a clean platform for kids run by independent creators. So, if anyone reading this has kids, please monitor what they watch on Youtube.

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