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.

    • borisjohnson [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I’ve known kids like this. Went out to dinner with family friends who brought their kids and they didn’t even try to get them to stop using their phones through the whole meal. They barely spoke, just used their phones. Apparently it had got to the point where the following behaviour would be so bad it was just easier to let them stay on. These kids were over 10 too, well past tantrum age.