I have a son who is a year and a half old.
He loves YouTube and if allowed to (which he definitely is not!) would spend hours on the platform.
You can therefore appreciate that when the news broke regarding the infamous Momo and violent Peppa Pig videos infiltrating Kids YouTube that my concern for my son's safety grew exponentially.
I, personally, never experienced these inappropriate videos but I decided that this phenomenon was too important to be left in the dark about.
I decided to do a little digging into the world of Kids YouTube and what I found has worried me deeply. Content initially appearing as slightly weird but seemingly harmless videos, once the surface has been scratched, became something far more sinister. The world of Kids YouTube, the content produced, the people producing it and the corporations regulating it are bound up in a self-serving circle exploiting children for monetary gain.
WEIRD BUT HARMLESS?
Anyone who has spent any time on kids YouTube or has stumbled across kids videos on regular YouTube will be aware of the weirdness of the videos that children are engaging with. A weirdness that presents itself as a result of audio-visual elements being thrown together with no commonality.
When my son initially started to watch YouTube I would bring up videos with his favourite TV characters from Paw Patrol of Thomas and Friends but the search would quickly transcend into a totally different line of videos which now dominate the YouTube feed.
These videos are highly colourful, mostly animated, nursery rhymes many of which contain familiar branded characters from famous TV shows.
What worries me most about these videos is the bad gut feeling I get from them. There is nothing 'wrong' with them but in the words of James Bridle there is something "decidedly off" (Bridle, J., 2017)
Can you see similarities between videos?
Can you see similarities between channels?
Almost Identical?
What is happening is that these Kids YouTube channels are creating content that is informed by and adheres to YouTube algorithms and increases popularity and therefore profitability.
"Titles are typically a word salad designed to attract children's and parents' searches, while the videos' content leans heavily on generic 2D or 3D animated models, usually incongruously combined with familiar figures from hit Disney or superhero franchises."(Orphanides, K.G., 2018)
The below is an example of a 'finger family' video of which there are 17 million versions currently on YouTube.
The above video is a perfect example of the fusing together of token keywords, nursery tropes and familiar characters to create a very strange and very popular video.
But popular for who?
Popular for children or popular for the algorithm? The target audience for which these videos are created, are children under the age of 5.
By and large, these kids do not have the capacity to type in the search bar for videos of their choice and so rely largely on recommended videos and related videos. Recommended and related videos are presented to children as a result of YouTube's algorithm which looks at related content, such as the tropes outlined above; and video views.
"The view numbers of these videos must be taken under serious advisement. A huge number of these videos are essentially created by bots and viewed by bots, and even commented on by bots...This is content production in the age of algorithmic discovery — even if you’re a human, you have to end up impersonating the machine." (Bridle, J., 2017)
These 'popular' kids videos are being made for an algorithm, popularised by bots and showed to passive and vulnerable children who haven't the capacity to disagree, so that a small minority can make a lot of money. The Principle of these videos existence is disgusting but what happens when the content is too?
WEIRD AND HARMFUL
The Internet is a deep dark place full of dangerous people. By and large this is understood. We understand that the likes of 4chan trolls and tropes exist and thrive in this environment and like to create the most disturbing and sinister of parodies and satires for an array of reasons that I don't necessarily want to understand.
However when you bring together the dark and grotesque humour of these dangerous people and couple it with children's TV show characters and kids YouTube two very harmful things occur.
Firstly, we see a surge in the creation of violent disturbing 'parodies' of kids TV shows such as Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, Mickie Mouse etc. This means that videos with this content can slip through the kids YouTube filter meaning young children are exposed to very traumatising content.
"Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center on Media and Child Health, said such videos brought up a host of issues for children.
'It’s just made that much more upsetting by the fact that characters they thought they knew and trusted are behaving in these ways,' he said." (Maheshwari, S., 2017)
Secondly, these videos are making money!
"The sheer number of them on the platform is staggering, and many have millions or even hundreds of millions of views, videos that use popular franchises and the promise of education to target searches that parents and children are likely to carry out...The parasites-and-eye-gouging video, titled ᴴᴰ Mickey Mouse Babies Crying because of Grub in Belly! Finger Family Song Nursery Rhymes racked up 20,218,533 views in two days before we reported it." (Orphanides, K.G., 2018)
The popularity of these children TV characters means that children are viewing the content. The sick twisted minds of adults that create and proliferate this content means that it is also popular amongst this group doubling the engagement, making these videos rank higher in search and recommendation settings. h3h3Productions explore this further in the video below but I will add:
This video is distressing to watch and contains fowl language and distasteful content. Do not watch if you are worried about being upset, distressed or offended.
ALGORITHMS, CAPITALISM AND OUR CHILDREN
Whether it be slightly strange content or highly disturbing traumatising content, the videos that children are being exposed to on YouTube and Kids YouTube are being manufactured for profitability at their expense.
Children seem to be less of a target for this 'disease' and more of a casualty of its manifestation.
"What is concerning to me about the Peppa videos is how the obvious parodies and even the shadier knock-offs interact with the legions of algorithmic content producers until it is completely impossible to know what is going on. (“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”)" (Bridle, J., 2017)
And what disgusts me most is that the platforms allowing for this abuse to occur are, for all intents and purposes, complicit in its execution.
YouTube 'introducing' solutions to this problem consists of: "YouTube [saying] it would pull advertising from content that portrays family-entertainment characters (such as, say, Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald) engaging in violent, sexual, vile, or otherwise inappropriate behaviour.“We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged. Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids" (Spangler, T., 2017)
I'm sorry...correct me if i'm wrong but this seems like obvious policies that should already be in place.
What I would like to suggest is that YouTube cannot introduce any drastic measures to the restriction of the monetisation of this content as kids videos are such a massive segment of their profits and by introducing these legislations would have a detrimental impact on their net profit.
Automated reward systems like YouTube algorithms necessitate exploitation in the same way that capitalism necessitates exploitation, and if you’re someone who bristles at the second half of that equation then maybe this should be what convinces you of its truth. Exploitation is encoded into the systems we are building, making it harder to see, harder to think and explain, harder to counter and defend against. Not in a future of AI overlords and robots in the factories, but right here, now, on your screen, in your living room and in your pocket. (Bridle, J., 2017)
"Using automation for online advertising has turned Google [and YouTube] into a behemoth worth more than half a trillion dollars." (Maheshwari, S., 2017)
Why would they stop now?
THE ANSWER?
I am disgusted and disheartened as a parent and as an individual that this is the reality that we live in today.
I can pose no answers to the issue of abuse and misuse that goes on on these online platforms as the corporations themselves won't change due to the impact that it would have on their revenue.
Governments can try and introduce all encompassing legislation but it will never work. They do not have the expertise, resource or time to keep on top of the ever changing technological sphere.
I suppose all we can do is try to protect our own in the hope that the general good in humanity can overcome greed and that our children can grow to learn the danger and the beauty in our new Cyber World.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------BIBLIOGRAPHY
Orphanides, K.G, 2018, Children’s YouTube is still churning out blood, suicide and cannibalism, wired.com, accessed at:[https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems-algorithm-recommend] on 23/03/2019
Bridle, J., 2017, Something is Wrong on the Internet, Medium.com, accessed at: [https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2] on 23/03/2019
Spangler, T., 2017, YouTube Moves to Age-Restrict Weird and Disturbing Kid-Targeted Videos, Variety.com, accessed at: [https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/youtube-kids-bizarre-disturbing-videos-blocking-age-restriction-1202611864/] on 23/03/2019
Gutelle,S., 2017, YouTube’s Purge Of Inappropriate Content Aimed At Kids Spans Tens Of Billions Of Views, Tubefilter.com, accessed at [https://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/20/youtube-purge-kids-videos-billions-views/] on 23/03/2019
Gutelle, S., 2017, YouTube Vows To Crack Down On Inappropriate Videos Aimed At Children, Tubefilter.com, accessed at:[https://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/10/youtube-kids-inappropriate-videos/] on 23/03/2019
Gutelle, S., 2017, YouTube’s Algorithm Recommends Disturbing Videos To Kids, But Viewers Can Help Clean It Up, accessed at [https://www.tubefilter.com/2017/11/09/youtube-kids-algorithm-videos/] on 23/03/2019
h3h3Productions, 2017, Toy Channels are Ruining Society, YouTube.com, accessed at: [https://youtu.be/fBWf6Zvn0jQ] on 23/03/2019
Subedar, A., & Yates, W., 2017, The disturbing YouTube videos that are tricking children, BBC Trending, accessed at:[https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39381889] on 23/03/2019
Maheshwari, S., 2017, On YouTube Kids, Startling Videos Slip Past Filters, The New York Times, accessed at:[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/business/media/youtube-kids-paw-patrol.html?_r=0] on 23/03/2019
Palmer, A., & Griffiths, B., 2016, ASSAULT 'N PEPPA:Kids left traumatised after sick YouTube clips showing Peppa Pig characters with knives and guns appear on app for children, TheSun.co.uk, accessed at: [https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1418668/kids-left-traumatised-after-sick-youtube-clips-showionng-peppa-pig-characters-with-knifes-and-guns-appear-on-app-for-children/ on 23/03/2019
Cuffe, J., 2019, Just what is the Momo Challenge?, RTE, accessed at:[https://www.rte.ie/eile/brainstorm/2019/0225/1032886-just-what-is-the-momo-challenge/] on 23/03/2019
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