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.
My opinion switches between the two sides on this issue. On one hand, i spent a lot of my time growing up watching tv and playing video games because my parents were working all of the time, so i had to take care of myself, which meant tv and microwave meals.
On the other hand, the kids i know who are being raised on it are also being raised by parents who don’t want their kids to go outside in fear they might get hurt or lost. This is gonna mess up the kids socially, and i don’t like the implications that’s gonna have.
