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.
I hate to be a "I was raised in the wrong generation" type, but honestly, I do think social media (including Youtube) has really ruined the younger generation. I'm in my early 20s, and I wasn't fully raised on the Internet like my nieces and nephews, but it was still pretty online for the most part by middle school age. It really did fuck me up as I'm sure it did for most of the younger people on here. There were times I should have been playing outside or with in-person friends, but was scrolling on Tumblr instead. Now I see my nieces and nephews hardly ever go outside and play or even mess with their regular toys. They just always want their IPads or Xbox. And there are good things on these electronics, but I do feel they suffer from a lack of creativity and imagination they would have if they were playing with other toys more. And then an entire year in quarantine (for USA kids) with classes online for a long time. Yeah, I'm sure kids under the age of 18 right now are going to be socially deficient.