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| Parents are calling out YouTube over videos aimed at kids with inappropriate content, including one offering instructions on how to commit suicide, known as the "Momo challenge." With the "Momo challenge," in particular, YouTube confirmed it hasn't seen any evidence of its existence on the platform, but this hoax from less than a year ago has parents again questioning the video content consumed by their children. |
YouTube is the worst — and your kids are addicted |
| By Nancy Kaffer |
| YouTube makes me feel very old because I do not understand it. |
| What I don't even remotely understand is the appeal of watching strangers open toys, of musical acts that lip-sync to popular songs, video collections of animals pooping, minireality programs featuring regular families with foolish names , the "Baby Shark" song or the repetitive remix du jour, or, most inexplicably, watching other people play video games. |
| But this is what millions of American children consider prime entertainment, and while I realize that I sound old and very crotchety right now, I don't know a single parent who's really comfortable with the quality or quantity of time their children spend on YouTube. |
| A story that has resurfaced about kid-oriented YouTube videos edited to include instructions for committing suicide — well, most parents I've talked to figure that's probably par for the YouTube course. |
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| YouTube is HUGE. The platform has almost 2 billion logged-in users each month, which is about half of the internet, and that doesn't count olds like me who learn the treble crochet without logging in. |
| A Pew Research Center report found that 81 percent of parents with children age 11 or younger let their kids watch YouTube. About 34 percent said their kids watched YouTube videos regularly, and 61 percent said their kids had seen videos they didn't think were suitable. |
| The site is largely self-regulating: While YouTube has a YouTube Kids site, moderating what's uploaded there relies on user flagging and smart detection technology. In other words, after your child hears those suicide instructions, you can try to get the video taken down. |
 | | YouTube Kids | | Courtesy YouTube | |
| This kind of thing isn't a one-off: There's that story about "Peppa Pig" torture videos that came up a few years back. Just last week, a co-worker told me that his 7-year-old son stumbled across a pornographic parody of the popular cartoon "Teen Titans GO!," thanks to YouTube's helpful autoplay queue of supposedly related videos. ("Daddy, why are the Teen Titans in a hotel room?" my friend's child asked. "Daddy, why are they in their underpants?") |
| And so it goes. |
| I have no idea what percentage of YouTube is deceptive and disturbingly edited stuff. I'm sure it's not that much. |
| But even at its best, YouTube is kind of the worst. There's a lot of worrisome commercialism behind unboxing videos (that's the one where people open toys) and even the minireality shows (generally, they also open toys, or take paid promotional visits to expensive vacation destinations). That's plenty to trouble parents who would prefer not to raise venal children. |
| And most of us raising children don't really know how to handle it. |
| YouTube has nearly as many monthly users as Facebook, and loads more than Twitter. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress to talk about the role his site played in the 2016 election. Twitter has grudgingly agreed to purge its site of apparent bot accounts. But YouTube doesn't seem to regularly figure in the halting conversations about what, exactly, we have wrought with this here internet. |
| Except among parents. I realize that not allowing your child to access YouTube seems like an easy fix for this problem, but given the proliferation of devices and Wi-Fi among even young children, it's not a cure-all. None of us want to deny our children access to common technology, like that one kid you went to school with whose parents didn't even own a TV. But we're in uncharted territory right now, and none of us are exactly sure what it's doing to our kids. |
| Nancy Kaffer is a columnist and a member of the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board, where this column first appeared. You can follow her on Twitter: @nancykaffer. |
What others are saying |
| Keza MacDonald, The Guardian : "The majority of YouTube Kids content isn't distressing or disturbing — but it is mostly brain-numbingly terrible. A vast amount of the kid-friendly videos that are uploaded are straight-up garbage: cheap, algorithm-driven songs or nonsensical stories featuring 3D models or toys of popular characters such as Elsa, Spider-Man and Peppa Pig. They are designed purely to extract views and thereby money from common search terms — not to entertain or educate kids. ... The easiest solution for parents of young children might be to purge YouTube from everything — phones, TVs, games consoles, iPads, the lot." |
| YouTube, Twitter : "We want to clear something up regarding the Momo Challenge: We've seen no recent evidence of videos promoting the Momo Challenge on YouTube. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges are against our policies. If you see videos including harmful or dangerous challenges on YouTube, we encourage you to flag them to us immediately. These challenges are clearly against our Community Guidelines." |
| Drew Reeves, KXLY.com : "Teach your kids about the dangers of social media and agree to an internet safety plan. Have everyone sign it. Make a list of what information your child should never share online. Talk frequently with your kids about what they're doing online and who they're communicating with. And monitor everything. Keep the computer in a common place and charge phones in the living room at night. It's also important for parents to keep an open dialogue with their kids. Make sure your children know that they can be safe coming to you with any troubling experiences they have online." |
What readers are saying |
| So a group of people are posting videos for kids with insensitive content? And none of these videos of the "Momo challenge" is online now, according to YouTube? |
| The better way to ensure this stuff isn't viewed by kids is pay attention to what your kids are doing, instead of expecting some internet company to do your parenting for you. |
| — Jeff Barr |
| People were hacking popular kids shows on YouTube with this sick "Momo challenge," telling kids to do all types of crazy stuff. Parents, be aware of YouTube; people in this world are just plain sick. Some people think this is a hoax, but I would rather be vigilant. |
| — @Bez1074 |
| In case any of my parent friends have little ones who watch YouTube Kids, you might want to ask your child if he has seen this "Momo challenge" video. I plan to talk to mine about this. There are sick people in this world. Don't mess with my kids through something they enjoy. |
| — @JustN2bad |
| To join the conversations about topics on USA TODAY or provide feedback to this newsletter, email jrivera@usatoday.com, comment on Facebook, or use #tellusatoday on Twitter. |
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