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.
In amongst the vapid shit there’s a sizeable portion of actively harmful shit, usually focusing on Spiderman and/or Elsa and usually involving surgery, pregnancy, injections, toilets, dentistry and occasionally drug use and sexual content. It all feels procedurally generated and like fetish content at the same time, sometimes it’s cartoon and sometimes it features adult actors. It’s a very weird rabbit hole with lots of theories about where it’s coming from.
I think YouTube’s now cracked down on the most egregious channels but here’s an example (and this is the lighter side of things)
THE TITLE CONTAINS THE PHRASE “ASS INJURY” WHAT THE FUCK. THIS IS NOT FOR CHILDREN, THIS IS FOR STONNERS
