
YouTube isn’t for kids, but kids videos are among its most popular - rschnalzer
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-24/pew-study-youtube-children-content
======
anonymous5133
I have a friend who specifically makes content for young children. He is an
animator but specifically makes content for young children. I asked him why he
makes this content and he essentially summed it up as:

1) young children are more likely to incorrectly click an ad or to not skip
the ad (because they can't really read or understand that the ads are
skippable)

2) young children often do not have ad blocking software installed

3) young children are more likely to watch playlists

The overall effect is that young children demographic is the most profitable
demographic on youtube. Also lots of parents are basically using youtube as a
form of free babysitting. Next time you go to the grocery store, just look at
how many kids are sitting in the cart tapping away on a phone or a tablet.

~~~
settyness
This is what I thought was the case since the "Adpolcalypse". I made the point
to my colleagues that what YouTube wanted was slightly predatory in nature.
Kids have no spending power, why are we catering to them on that platform? Why
can't an adult, who has spending power, watch edgy content if they want to?
Kids are exploited while adults are being treated like children.

Then there was the instance, a sort of another soft "Adpocalypse" where all
these videos featuring children had creepy comments. This caused a culling of
comments on certain videos, but it was ultimately a situation YouTube had
fostered.

~~~
FussyZeus
This is a fundamental flaw of advertising. As advertising has increased over
my lifetime, I've become so inured to it that I literally no longer register
things as advertisements. I just see straight through them. They're everywhere
now; ads are shown on McDonalds' menus. Ads are on gas pumps while I'm
filling. Ads are placed on seemingly every electronic or physical surface in a
desperate arms race for my attention and the more they try, the more my brain
just blocks the shit out.

It's just a never ending deluge of spam and bullshit in my brain and it's been
there for so long and has increased to such a ludicrous degree as I actually
now LAUGH when I see an ad shoved into a new place.

Like, I do not understand why anybody is spending money on advertising. You
could be advertising the most amazing product in the history of the world and
you would be simply drowned in spam, and no one would ever see it or care.

And to bring this rant back to topic, of course kids are the only ones left.
They haven't had their minds assaulted with predatory conniving language for
decades yet. They're the only ones who still look at ads as anything other
than spam email but in whatever format it's in. But don't worry; at the
breakneck pace advertisers are set into now, they'll be getting used to it
even sooner, and it will be even LESS effective, until the only people still
watching ads are infants crapping their pants. Maybe we can monetize little
holograms in diapers and then sell the diapers for 5 cents cheaper. Let's just
get to the bottom of this barrel!

~~~
product50
Obviously you are wrong since literally 100s of billions of $$ are being spent
on digital advertising and they are driving downstream conversions. Don't
generalize your experience.

Advertisers (especially Direct Response) are some of the more analytical folks
you'll meet. They won't spend a cent on a channel if they are not making it
back in downstream conversions.

~~~
FussyZeus
I think there’s a lot of people making a lot of money pretending it’s 1955.
That’s my theory.

B2B advertising and directed, targeted campaigns probably have good results.
The spam shit I’m talking about? The crap you see on YouTube especially? I
doubt it.

------
robbrown451
YouTube the app (or web site) is not great for kids, however, there is an
immense amount of content on YouTube that is wonderful for kids.

I curate content for my five year old daughter, and she can easily browse it,
without descending into the rabbit hole that is YouTube-at-large. It's easy
for me to do, but only because my main project
([https://pianop.ly/](https://pianop.ly/)) involves embedding YouTube videos
into web pages, and I have a ton of tools that make it easy (for me, not
necessarily for anyone).

I don't understand why there isn't more of this. I wish there was a large
community of parents that wanted to curate content -- educational, musical,
etc -- that kids could enjoy without parents having to worry so much they'll
either stumble into truly awful stuff, or more likely, just spend their time
looking at completely inane timewasters. (opening eggs to reveal toys, etc)

A side benefit is that if a video is embedded into a web page, the only ads
YouTube ever shows is a banner. (although, I pay $10 a month to have YouTube
without ads, so that isn't an issue for me. We don't have Netflix or cable or
broadcast TV, by the way)

Incidentally, my daughter and I have friends (another dad and daughter) that
are YouTubers, and while this girl is only 8, their content is good (in my
opinion) and is a creative outlet for them and they have a lot of fun with it.
The dad is an excellent videographer/editor, and the daughter is an excellent
skateboarder, and they combine those things and share it with the world. (we
met via YouTube and the four of us meet up at skateparks...my daughter is also
really good)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzrrgcqyvF4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzrrgcqyvF4)
I just don't see the problem with this.

~~~
rihegher
Parent of two kids here, i'm curating videos for them as well. Maybe we could
create a tool for group curating videos?

~~~
tokyokawasemi
Same here. I've started a small thing here: [https://fugu.tv](https://fugu.tv)
(piggy backing off this neat little repo [https://github.com/iRaul/podcasts-
repo](https://github.com/iRaul/podcasts-repo) )

~~~
rihegher
Thanks for this, did you start this alone?

~~~
tokyokawasemi
Yeah. I live in Tokyo and so my kid needs some English inputs. This is one
effort to try to put that together.

------
distant_hat
Youtube should not be allowed to monetize any videos with children in it until
they comply with the same conditions that movies that employ child actors have
to. That would remove the incentive to make children perform for Youtube
videos.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
How would that work for those Russian toy videos my kid likes so much? Are we
going to force American laws on Russia or just segregate the videos?

~~~
cortesoft
I mean, it is an American company paying out the ad revenue, and deciding
which videos can be monetized or not. So yes, if a Russian wants to get paid
advertising money by youtube, they would need to follow American laws.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
All that would achieve is the next popular video sharing website not being
American. YouTube has a lot of viewers, advertisers, content providers that
aren’t Americans.

~~~
cortesoft
I am not arguing for it, I am just saying that is how the law works.

------
guywithabike
If YouTube isn't for kids, why do they host videos that are clearly and
explicitly targeting toddlers? For example:
[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=videos+for+todd...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=videos+for+toddlers)

The most egregious thing, in my mind, is that YouTube wraps toddler videos in
ads for things like the John Wick movie and local breweries in my area. The
fact that this isn't a difficult problem to solve is the strongest indication
that A) YouTube knows exactly what's going on, and B) they frankly do not care
because they can make a buck off of showing shockingly inappropriate content
to children.

~~~
xyclos
aren't those ads targeted to the viewer (you) rather than the content of the
video? if you watch it in incognito do you see those same types of ads? I'm
not disagreeing with your sentiment, just curious. Also, the uploader of the
video certainly has made a conscious choice to monetize a video targeted at
children. YouTube certainly didn't do anything to help the situation, but some
of the blame should probably go toward the uploader of the video.

As an aside: my kids occasionally watch videos in the YouTube Kids app
(version of youtube curated for kids). That app certainly never shows wildly
inappropriate ads (though it does have ads).

~~~
colordrops
YouTube is aware that multiple people watch videos under one account. They are
also aware of the nature of the content of the video and should be able to
adjust ads based on that as well.

------
pier25
It's easy to blame Youtube but parents are IMO responsible for what their kids
do, up to a certain age. Many parents use smartphones and tablets as pacifiers
for their kids and that is just wrong.

There is a reason France has banned devices on primary schools.

A recent study found that:

> _Early results revealed that kids who use screens for more than 7 hours per
> day show physical changes to the brain in the form of premature thinning of
> the cortex._

[https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/screen-time-nih-
study-60-min...](https://bigthink.com/mind-brain/screen-time-nih-
study-60-minutes)

~~~
nickserv
More than 7 hours of screen time per day seems like child abuse. Or as I call
it when I do it, "work".

------
point78
Was watching a nursery rhyme channel with my 1.5 year old son...then an ad
comes on for a drug trafficking series on Netflix...drugs, guns, etc

~~~
dgzl
I sympathize but wasn't that an advertisement targeted at you specifically?
Meaning, the platform didn't know you were with your child. Should targeted
ads change their age appropriateness with the content of the viewed material?
I imagine not...

~~~
point78
>Should targeted ads change their age appropriateness with the content of the
viewed material?

Yes, they most definitely should. A video that specifically targets
babies/children should not have ads that are 18+.

Where else in the world would you view media for children and be shown ads for
drug dealing dramas?

~~~
derefr
Because adults sometimes watch children's programming too (yes, really), and
as far as they can tell, that's what's going on.

~~~
dgzl
This exactly.

But to be honest, maybe this is an opportunity to create some kind of maturity
level standard, where content shouldn't be above a set threshold, regardless
of source. On YouTube For Kids, it would be lower than regular YouTube, which
would be lower than RedTube. Advertising would be compelled to build in
functionality that checks a page's threshold and serves ads that match.

I'm not saying I agree with the idea, just putting it out there.

~~~
point78
See my reply above. Content designed and marketed to children nowhere else has
18+ advertisements. Same standard should (and has to imo) be applied to "new"
media.

~~~
derefr
That's because nobody else (in the streaming video space) is trying to serve
ads based on who's watching the content. YouTube is in a different advertising
market that nobody else has yet attempted to enter.

~~~
point78
When it comes to children's programming...it shouldn't be based on who's
watching, it should be based on if the content itself is designed for children
or not and serve ads accordingly.

That's what every advertising platform does...

------
pbhjpbhj
Don't YouTube have a special kids app for showing videos from YouTube to kids,
I've heard they do?

Ah, they do,
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.kids&hl=en)

Or maybe YouTube isn't a trademark?

~~~
mattferderer
They do have a YouTube kids app. It's not great & needs heavy supervision.

You have the option to limit videos to only ones you approve but this really
prevents finding new videos unless you do a bunch of work. There are some
really good videos we've found while letting our kids explore. Most are
British.

If you choose to let them search "kid friendly" videos you have the option to
block videos but it doesn't alter their algorithm any it seems. For example,
some of the most annoying videos are ones where a child & parent are opening &
playing with some toy. The video is really just a terrible ad for a product &
it seems YouTube is filled with these. I'm curious if the child/parent actors
are writing these toys off as business expenses or getting them at discounts
for trying to sell them to kids on YouTube.

~~~
Bluecobra
I would hope so, especially if you're raking in $22 million a year reviewing
toys:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/ryan-toysreview-7-year-
old-m...](https://www.businessinsider.com/ryan-toysreview-7-year-old-
makes-22-million-per-year-youtube-2018-12)

With L.O.L. Surprise, they don't even need to buy commercials, Youtube does
that for them:

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lol-surprise-hot-new-
toy/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lol-surprise-hot-new-toy/)

~~~
mattferderer
Wow. Well this makes a lot of sense. I know what will be happening to the
YouTube Kids app in our house...

------
duxup
I tried the YouTube Kids app a while back.... it was a terrible experience.

It was either straight merch type stuff "Hey let's play with this very
specifically named toy." If I use the account that gets YouTube ads... WAY
inappropriate ads.

Or just painfully inane content.

Granted there are channels I liked, anything associated with PBS or Sesame
Street... but at the time you couldn't block channels you didn't like, nor
could white-list anything so I just deleted the app and my kids don't get to
watch YouTube unless I'm actively sitting with them watching, and filtering.

Based on everything else about Youtube, I don't trust YouTube enough to give
them another chance.

------
ronilan
The YouTube + Kids has been an unsolved problem for many years now. It’s not
easy putting those two together. Google knows that and have been working on it
continuously. Very early on, around 2008, they realized that 2+2 is somewhere
between 3.9 and 4.1 and with advances in ML and AI they’ve increased
confidence levels significantly. They are now (2019) pretty close to proving
that 2+2 comes out 4 (or more precisely 4.001337) regardless of how many hours
of video are uploaded every minute. That said, they are also cautious not to
raise hopes too high. As with all complex problems, it may take years to
solve, if at all.

------
stefan_
Of course the videos are "among its most popular". You know those inane
autoplaying videos after you just watched something where everyone rushes to
stop the countdown? Well, kids don't. Lazy parents all over the world park
their kids in front of YouTube, and they will happily watch whatever inane
crap YouTube throws at them for hours on end. Except for the lack of spending
money, they are the perfect viewer. It's disturbing watching young kids "use"
YouTube, watching repeats or slight variations of the same mind numbingly
stupid video for hours, lulled into an algorithmic trance hitting their brain
just right, without the maturity to break the vicious cycle.

------
darkpuma
If kids 'need' TV shows to watch and parents need a source of children's
entertainment they can trust, isn't that were we normally expect an
organization like PBS to fill the need?

With an organization like PBS, they have a reputation of manually curating
what they show, while something like Youtube Kids just has automated systems
and manual reports to supplement it. It's hard to believe Google/Youtube could
ever provide automated curation as well as PBS. How many media articles that
boil down to _" youtube showed this to kids but PBS never would have"_ are we
going to have before people get the idea?

~~~
muro
I think YouTube is avoiding responsibility here - hosting videos for kids with
billions of views and running ads on them, while saying "it's not for kids" to
save money to actually curate / avoid showing videos not safe for them.
YouTube kids is also disingenuous here - no 10+ year old would want to watch
that.

Saying "it's the responsibility of parents" is the same PR driven avoiding of
responsibility by YouTube.

YouTube themselves make it as easy as possible for kids to use YouTube
(preinstalled apps on TVs etc), they should bear some responsibility too.

~~~
darkpuma
Oh, I completely agree. Youtube should stop pretending they have a service
suitable for children. Youtube should be making it clear to consumers that
their service is for mature viewers only because they are incapable of vetting
content for children with the accuracy consumers rightfully expect from a
children's entertainment company.

~~~
muro
Either go out of their way to prevent kids from using the service or invest
and make it safe for kids. I think they will lobby / PR heavily to continue to
do neither.

------
techntoke
YouTube keeps sending out weird notices saying that you can't use it if you
are under 13 and to send in my driver's license and other information, but
then I see all these videos where the people making them are clearly under 13
and targeting kids. Plus, they never do anything when I respond saying that I
don't feel comfortable with sending something like that. My daughter has an
app called Like and that definitely has a lot of kids uploading videos. I
think these companies just need to make it look like they care or are trying
to do something about the issue.

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Lol, you browse YouTube logged in?

~~~
techntoke
Does there exist a descent app to create YouTube playlist without logging in?

~~~
icebraining
If you use Android, try NewPipe, it can do that and more.

------
83457
Verizon FIOS TV has a YouTube widget that can't be disabled. I was really
surprised when we switched from cable. In the past we would let our kids on
youtube to watch something on rare occasion but suddenly the TV has youtube
built-in with no way to disable. You can set an age restriction but when you
try to go to something that is age restricted it prompts you to go to settings
to change it. There is no way to just block the widget like you can a channel.
I think the work around is to setup a YT account just for this purpose, set
age restrictions and then sign-in to it on the FIOS box but we haven't felt
like we have had to go there yet. I see discussions and complaints to Verizon
for years with customers wanting to block widget or restrict kids from
changing the age restriction setting with a pin.

------
us0r
> He said that the platform’s stated age policy is largely a ploy to avoid
> complying with the law, which makes it illegal to collect data on children
> under 13 without parental consent.

Getting tired of my at the time 6 year old videos being mixed in with mine, I
tried to make an account for her and set the age to 6 and it was shutdown. I
had to get out a credit card and jump through hoops to get it back on. I wish
I could set an age and language filter on YouTube. For now its you can watch
anything in your subscriptions and the off chance you want to watch something
new we'll help.

Apparently all kids like to watch the same thing over and over again which is
why the view counts are so high but i don't doubt YouTube is the most popular
site for kids. Not sure about the ad stuff cause I pay for premium.

------
dplgk
Isn't for kids? The reems of kid and toddler focused playlist that show up on
YouTube say otherwise. They're trying to hook them when they're young.

------
popeshoe
Sometimes if you catch a new video soon after it's been uploaded you can see
it's in a state before the recommendations have been generated, the few times
I've seen it happen the recommendations were entirely kids videos with vibrant
thumbnails and strange names.

I have no idea how youtube gets it's recommendations when this happens, but if
it's some sort of randomish fallback list, I can easily believe that cheap,
mass produced kids content is a huge fraction of youtube uploads/views.

------
adamredwoods
Why doesn't YouTube community-source the content tags? I see a "report"
button, but nothing that allows me, as an audience, to decide what category
this video belongs in. I see tags such as "gaming" but no other tags to
further delineate to sub-groups of "gaming". For such a large platform, I
don't see a way to filter content accurately. I wonder if they rely too much
on "recommended for you" algorithms.

~~~
pvankessel
That's actually why we had to come up with our own topic typology in this
report - some of the category tags that YouTube provides were too broad to be
useful ("TV Shows") and others were way too specific ("Music of Latin
America")

~~~
lostlogin
Music of Latin America seem pretty broad.

------
jasonrhaas
My sister in law has kids that are in the 7 - 13 year range. The girl
specifically (she's 9 or so) will just put on a youtube video and then just
watch whatever it recommends after that endlessly.

To adults, the content is absolute garbage, but to her its entertaining. I
noticed that most of the stuff she watches is just some tweens or twenty
somethings doing every day life stuff (sitting in a pool, making spaghetti,
etc). The only real difference is that they do it with high energy and make a
big deal out of everything.

WOOOOAAA noodles feel weird! NO WAAAYY the sauce is RED!! HOLY COW this hot
TUB is SO HOT!

I guess it works because these videos often have 400k to millions of views.

~~~
derefr
Sounds exactly the same as anything on the Disney channel.

------
pvankessel
Full report is here, in case it interests anyone:
[https://www.pewinternet.org/2019/07/25/a-week-in-the-life-
of...](https://www.pewinternet.org/2019/07/25/a-week-in-the-life-of-popular-
youtube-channels/)

~~~
ronilan
This is a very good report.

Makes me wonder why such data has to be generated by an external “fact tank”
when, with some caveats, such could come directly from YouTube.

~~~
minimaxir
The YouTube Data API is a bit...arbitrarily fussy. (example:
[https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1154482894850498561](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/1154482894850498561))

I'm tempted to revamp my old scraper for it and open source it.

------
spraak
I just avoid YouTube altogether for my child. There are some really good TV
network apps like Barnkanalen SVT (Sweden), ZDF/KIKA (Deutschland) that make
quality content, have no ads and are free. And no risk of watching something I
don't want them to.

~~~
kalleboo
Same here. Also all the big streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video,
Hulu) have kids sections with quality children's programming. I don't
understand why parents let loose their kids on YouTube when these alternatives
exist.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Also all the big streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu) have
> kids sections with quality children's programming.

All of them are absolutely swamped with hypercommercial psychologically
manipulative selling-toys-to-kids programming, though it's from big corps so I
guess that makes it okay.

> I don't understand why parents let loose their kids on YouTube when these
> alternatives exist.

Because YouTube, for all it's real problems, is both cheaper (free with ads)
than the others and has a huge trove of excellent kid-appropriate content
(including professionally produced stuff like the National Geographic Science
101 series) that isn't (AFAIK) on any of the other platforms and because most
people _aren 't_ familiar with the horror stories, or if they are (accurately
or not) interpret then as extreme edge cases, not likely events.

------
newsreview1
The "kid demographic" is Youtube's most profitable demographic. Though the
lawsuit may appear as impetus, this has been in the works for a long time.

------
Raphmedia
What about YouTube Kids?
[https://www.youtube.com/kids/](https://www.youtube.com/kids/)

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/Ry0Db](http://archive.is/Ry0Db)

------
cwkoss
Is that a Youtube for Kids competitor with no ads, and only pro-social
educational content?

~~~
kalleboo
PBS Kids? [https://pbskids.org/apps/pbs-kids-
video.html](https://pbskids.org/apps/pbs-kids-video.html)

------
kgwxd
They don't discourage children from browsing the site, just from creating
accounts.

------
microcolonel
These smear pieces against YouTube keep coming, and YouTube execs seem to
think they can help it by appeasing the media; it only alienates their
audiences, and paints a target on their back.

~~~
amfsn
I agree. Example: Facebook. Journalists keep shitting on Facebook. Facebook
doesn't care. Facebook (with WhatsApp and Instagram) keeps winning. Caving to
the blackmailing would've probably left them in a worse position, like having
to axe features that are popular for their users.

------
bg4
It's banned in our home. It's awful.

------
bayesian_horse
Baby Shark, du du du....

