December 31, 2024 - 7:00am
UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has written to video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, encouraging them to promote educational content to children so they can find “higher-quality” material more easily. This may seem well-intentioned, given that children have migrated to spending more time on streaming and social media platforms rather than watching television. Yet we should be wary of normalising this trend or accepting it as an inevitability — and we should be even more careful about giving Big Tech responsibility for deciding what should capture children’s attention.
Nandy should not be encouraging parents to use YouTube Kids, an app with over 11 million weekly viewers which is effectively an infinite slurry of multicoloured, mindless content. Studies have shown that using YouTube from a young age, when children have higher neuroplasticity, can delay language skills, impair emotional and behavioural regulation, and lead to poor self-control. While there are some genuinely informative and creative channels available, YouTube Kids is, ultimately, an algorithmically-incentivised advertising platform. Its very model is designed to be as addictive as possible — through features such as autoplay, which means that there is no natural endpoint — and to thrive on the consumption of clickbait. Educational material is inevitably sidelined and subsumed by content that is at worst horribly inappropriate, and at best completely vapid.
The Culture Secretary can impel YouTube all she likes to promote its educational content, but time and time again YouTube Kids has proven to be as much of a Wild West as the rest of the internet. A 2022 investigation by Tech Transparency Project found that videos on YouTube Kids talk positively about cocaine and crystal meth, provide instructions for concealing a gun, encourage skin bleaching, and introduce diet culture to children.
What’s more, children can easily find videos with well-known cartoon or Disney characters in violent or lewd situations. One channel, which has over 5 billion views, contains videos with titles like “Naked Hulk loses his pants” or “Frozen Elsa’s arm is broken by Spiderman”, while a WIRED investigation uncovered videos of Paw Patrol characters attempting suicide. Some videos “self-badge” as educational, and therefore may be promoted or chosen by parents, but may only be so because they contain words for colours — for example, “red” — when they are actually selling McDonalds.
Rather than relying on YouTube to moderate and filter its content effectively, a challenging task given that over 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute, Nandy should focus on investing in high-quality public service broadcasting and educational resources, such as BBC Bitesize, that will genuinely educate, entertain, and inform.
There was a 52% decline in funding for children’s TV between 2002 and 2018, which may be a reflection of changing behavioural patterns, but the unprecedented success of Peppa Pig — a British show worth £6 billion and watched in 180 countries — proves the power and importance of children’s viewing experiences. From Teletubbies to Postman Pat, Britain has previously been a world leader in children’s content, and has proven that cartoons do not have to be frivolous and time-wasting; many series contain well-developed characters, comic subplots, or interesting narratives. This is what Nandy should be championing, rather than assuming Big Tech can be trusted to have children’s best interests at heart.
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SubscribeHow insanely naive to think that any tech company has any interest other than getting people on the platform and generating income!
The only way I can think of to manage age related appropriate content is at the device level. The internet is far too global for any daft requests or “controls” advocated by the UK Government to have any effect.
Device level controls would need management of ownership of the SIM. When I have travelled to several countries and bought a local SIM I have to provide Passport details and proof of who I am. Bring in the same for the UK. Children then cannot buy a SIM, it has to be a known adult. Manage this registration with the involvement of the supplier to provide a siloed content for different age bands.
Difficult, costly for the SIM provider, but many benefits. No burner phones for criminals, easy ways to deter scam callers, safe(er) ways to limit access to inappropriate content.
Won’t happen (in my view), too much push back from tech companies and freedom people (and dodgy characters as well!). Pity, it would make the internet a far healthier place for children (and, arguably, the rest of us too).
Good idea. Another option is to compel social media platforms to charge a minimum subscription fee of £1 to be debited from a bank account.
Turn it off.
Thanks for an informative article. Links to the reported research would have been useful.
This sounds like a response to the pap provided for kids by Disney et al. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s produced by older kids.
And none of this compares to the violence found in the Brothers Grimm.
I’m all for better stuff for kids – but let’s make it better quality. My particular hate is all this stuff aimed at turning little girls into make up and clothes obsessed little princesses – eeek.
Postman Pat is overrated
So is Balamory!
Prefer Noddy, with the evil Elves.
So is responsible parenting, it would seem. It seems like a lot of expense and physical discomfort to just lose interest at such an early stage. My mother still criticises my tv choices (well, she criticises everything really, she’s not a jolly woman) despite me approaching 60.
She won’t do any of that, she doesn’t care. She just likes to pretend she does. We get the leaders we deserve perhaps.
Lisa Nandy. You have a problem right there before you even tackle the content that children view on YouTube. I wouldn’t put my cat in the care of Ms Nandy.
Perhaps parents should prevent their children watching YouTube. That would seem the logical thing to do. But then that would mean doing the actual job of parenting. Which on the evidence I see around me seems to be in short supply.
This is the same Ms Nandy who asserts that women can have penises!