Tangential, and only kind of related, but a personal pet peeve -- I like YouTube kids, but really dislike that half of the videos are "unboxings" of toys. These aren't really ads, but man they act like them and they end up in the recommended feeds kids see. There's also no way to get rid of them. YouTube Kids has some of the best parental controls relative to other streaming services, but this one ended up being a deal breaker for us.
I get it, I really do, but I feel like you have unreasonably high standards here. It used to be that kids would watch TV, and about a third of the time would be real ads that also couldn't be gotten rid of.
I'm not too familiar with kids content but I have seen some of those "unboxing toy" videos are hosted by children themselves. I find it a bit concerning if those videos are monetized. There are child labor laws but in the land of Youtube do they apply at all?
I think this new law would at least get rid of parents monetizing their children (as long as it's kids content).
Found those sort of channels disturbing too, one of the highest paid YT ad revenue stars is one such channel and companies pay around $50,000 outside of that to have the child playing with their product for a few minutes. The kid really doesn't look like he's that into it and kinda just going through the motions.
Staring in videos is hard work and having a child act daily on camera for the parents income can't be good for them.
Look at how disgusting the LOL toy line is, the toy itself is plastic garbage, wrapped in layers and layers of plastic garbage to provide that "unboxing rush". Children shouldn't be trained to be Wall-Es, they should be experiencing the beauty and pain of Charlotte's Web. Capitalism wants your children to be mindless, programmed consumers.
Hatchimals are this too, though in fairness, "surprise mechanics" have been a thing basically since forever— at least in my day you graduated from kinder eggs to magic the gathering booster packs.
Because triggering a dopamine response in a child in the procurement path of a toy has become normalized in the toy industry, doesn't mean we shouldn't recognize it and try to contain it.
I realized with embarrassing dread when my child opened an LOL, that opening any package in front of them has trained them in ways that shouldn't be trained into a child, let alone anyone. The weekly stream of skinner boxes has us de-evolving.
I'll also limit the amount of online shopping I do in front of children, it has the same issues.
Yeah, not trying to downplay the concern— kids have always been excited by wrapped up presents at Christmas and birthday times. But it does become a concern when the only thing that can hold their attention is the new thing, especially if you find yourself in that death spiral of doing Marie Kondo style purges of all your "clutter" only to find yourself re-buying the same stuff over again for the acquisition hit.
I wonder about myself with this when comes time for things like humble bundle, or when you look at people trading massive backlogs back and forth on r/steamgameswap. Like, I definitely do get totally sucked into particular games (recently on a turn-based kick with Into the Breach and Invisible Inc), and I'm not going to force myself to play something that hasn't grabbed my interest, but like everyone else, I have lots of games in backlog, many of which will never be played or even downloaded. Is this healthy? Is it a good example to be setting for my kids?
Parents traditionally hate programs targeted only at children, which is considered why Barney hatred blew up, plus the internet.
To move forward you need some sort of premise, else you're like all parents before you who thought this generations cartoons are dumb.
For instance, it's important to be able to share programs with your kids and it's hard to do that for programs written only for children, it needs multi-layers to help parents want to participate.
The alternate theory is, programs targeted just at children lets them enjoy life more. Or programs targeted just at children helps them develop faster. Or a neutral if they are semi-randomly browsing Youtube then un-boxing videos are no worse and no better than the other content they will watch.
