YouTube Kids is massively popular and also the actual worst content the world has to offer. The most successful content, racking up hundreds of millions of views, is extremely vapid and just consists of sounds and colours punctuated by disguised adverts for expensive toys. No narrative, no speech, nothing educational. Kids are so malleable and early development is so important, yet a sizeable chunk are watching people in knock-off Spider-Man costumes unwrap toys and chase around knock-off Elsas all day. I won’t even get into the unsettling uncanny valley side of things and the creepy procedurally generated animation on there.
I’m genuinely concerned about kids being brought up on what is essentially mental junk food through their most formative years. I’m not saying they all need to be listening to violin concertos all day, but I feel that when I was a kid straight up garbage like this didn’t even exist and every kids show had at least something you could learn from it, like Sesame Street, or was decently produced entertainment, like Pokemon. This has a quarter of a billion views and it’s just... nothing.
Before youtube cracked down on kids content there were really creepy videos that the algorithm was showing kids that had titles like that. Parents rightfully freaked out and youtube has attempted to get rid of the weird shit but predictably does a pretty bad job. Kids will still get weird shit every now and then. It's really bizarre and creepy.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems-algorithm-recommend
Can't believe people figuring out the six key phrases/images that will promote a video to the top of the algorithm would result in videos that are literally just compositions of those phrases/images without rhyme or reason.
The content was always deliberately made to abuse children's sexuality because they're curious about bodies and don't understand sexuality
They appear to exist to solicit clicks, full stop.
By abusing the fact that children are curious about that kind of stuff. There's a reason "doctor games" are so common among young children of any gender.