10 ms·
Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different
by drewcon 6y ago
Can confirm.
There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions.
My own anecdote:
Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbtbNmqENP1zTF-wJkXj0_WdIm&ab_channel=OKKYDOKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt...
At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack jawed at these videos for hours, it was like he was being lobotomized, and begged for them constantly. It was clear that they didn't actually teach him anything, and he couldn't even remember anything salient from watching them. We turned them off and haven't let him watch since. Even things like watching looney toons is infinitely better because there is some base narrative, characters, problems etc.
- dkarl 6y agoOh my god, that is horrid.
- dieortin 6y agoI find that video deeply unsettling.
- lmkg 6y agoI feel like those videos could be generated without human intervention, by hooking a neural net up to some video software and pre-made assets and optimizing for views. And, while that's not literally how they're made, the difference feels increasingly academic.
- yellowapple 6y ago> And, while that's not literally how they're made You sure? After watching a couple of 'em I ain't sure it's even physically possible for a human to come up with something so absurdly inhuman. It's like if that "surreal entertainment" channel branched out into actual kids' content instead of parodies thereof.
- jkingsman 6y agoSame. I particularly found the use of a bong-rip sound effect when the car was in the paint very odd.
- duxup 6y agoYup those videos are exactly what caused me to swear of YouTube too... just weird memorizing content. No YouTube anymore. PBS Kids from there on.
- duncan-donuts 6y agoI can’t tell if you’re also saying no to PBS kids or not, but based on my own observations as a parent I have to say PBS kids (and PBS in general) is the best kids programming out there. Full stop.
- duxup 6y agoValid point, I wrote that poorly. PBS Kids is awesome.
- Johnyma22 6y agoBefore I even clicked the link I guessed which video it was.. Oh man, that's not good.. ;\
- theshrike79 6y agoContent farming at its best. Cheap assets and autogenerated computer voice, someone is churning a dozen of these every day with different subjects. Then they're posted to dozens of YT channels in different languages with highly algorithm-optimised names and descriptions. Boom, money.
- stefan_ 6y agoWho is paying money to target kids that young?
- corysama 6y agoAdvertising to kids has traditionally been profitable since the invention of cartoons. But, this is pretty much entirely poorly-managed advertising money being sucked up by content farmers. YouTube makes huge profits directing completely useless ads to tens of millions of rapt toddlers watching reptile-brain videos for hours a day.
- sjg007 6y agoUnboxing videos are the big paydays for advertisers.
- redisman 6y agoKids have parents who are ready to pay to make them "happy"
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- missedthecue 6y agoit's not like 2 year olds have their own google account. It's the parent's account being advertised to
- 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y agoThe people at Google/Youtube really make it hard for quality content to succeed most of the time and their beloved algorithms mostly just boil down to "If a person clicks X, bombard them with as much things as close to X as possible from now on". (Also their obsession with "engagement" which translates to outrage, but I hope this is less relevant in Youtube Kids...) The danger for kids also stems from this in my opinion, if the wrong kind of video creeps into autoplay everything goes down the drain FAST with almost no chance to recover for the better by itself. Cheap and almost copied content gets rewarded the most.
- spicybright 6y agoKids should only be able to view content vetted by a human. Full stop. Too bad it's never going to happen.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 6y agoHistorically, that human was called a parent. Parents today have no chance at the on-slaught of content and the delivery mechanisms for it. When I was a kid, there were 3 networks with a handful of UHF channels. Cartoons only ran on Saturday morning, most channels went off the air at midnight, and the TV censors were much more strict with would could be on the air. My parents had it easy. When I became a parent, the internet was still small, and YT wouldn't be a thing for another 10 years. I feel for my kid becoming a parent though, or others dealing with it now.
- basch 6y agoThere was also a network level curator like PBS, Nickelodeon or Disney. Are there people/teams making vetted youtube playlists of content that surpasses a certain level of quality? That would be an interesting Kids mode. "Only allow videos from playlists that have been added/sunk to this account." Kind of a middle ground between making Google the content arbitrator and being able to watch every video before your kids do.
- IAmWorried 6y agoAm I the only one who doesn't see what's so creepy about this? It's a bunch of colors, and cars being dipped into the colors, with dumb music and sfx. Is it really so harmful? Honestly curious as I don't have kids of my own, so not sure.
- raunak 6y agoIt’s not content that kids are learning anything from. It’s the same reason why so many parents use a tablet as a pacifier for toddlers - it keeps them quiet, but it’s just adding nothing of value. As someone said below, even a show like Loony Tunes would be better, but preferably kids should be watching things such as PBS Kids.
- drewcon 6y agoI thought the same thing when we initially put them on. I thought "hey they're a bit weird, but this is the internet! What isn't weird here!?!?" But if you put them on continuously in front of a young kid (or at least my kid) and you can almost see their gray matter being systematically obliterated. I think its childhood equivalent of mindless doomscrolling.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoNot sure what others feel, but the video feels particularly lifeless to me. Combined with the effects mentioned by the grandparent post. Mentioned it seemed ok for a while. I don't allow my kid to use youtube at all so it is preaching to the choir here, pinch of salt, etc.
- wffurr 6y agoThere's nothing on the surface that seems bad, but it's weirdly creepy and unsettling, not to mention low production values. Doubly so when you see a two year old completely zoned out while watching it - staring, hardly breathing, insensate to the rest of the world.
- judge2020 6y agoWell, we know that childhood is extremely important to the development of humans, but we don't know what kids turn out to be if all they watch for years is just a bunch of colors that trigger dopamine and serotonin release constantly. Almost all adults in the U.S. today grew up with some form of media as T.V.s have always been pretty cheap one-time purchases (until recently with cable TV), so if you replace TV content (which at least always had a plotline or other educational content) with YT Kids they might turn out to be worse at problem-solving or other daily tasks that you need to perform for most jobs. It's definitely a subject that should be studied.
- crispyambulance 6y agoThat channel, OKKYDOKY, has 1.2 MILLION views. Who makes that stuff? WHY? It even purports to be from the USA. It's just some weird anonymous garbage. How do the people that make that stuff sleep at night? It's like they're trying to exploit glitches in the brains of toddlers.
- dylan604 6y agoThey probably sleep pretty well with the nice new comfy bed and pillows they are able to afford off of the channel.
- nopriorarrests 6y agoI mean, 1.2M views for the whole channel is... almost nothing, in terms of $? Surely not enough to affore new comfy bed and pillows?
- throwaway3699 6y ago1.2M views is worth thousands of dollars to the right demographic.
- sombremesa 6y agoI'd guess between $1k to $5k, and probably on the lower end of that spectrum. Might be worth it in a low cost of living country.
- crispyambulance 6y agoI expect that there are whole networks of channels that put out this stuff. The channel in question hasn't been active in a year. The "content creators" probably don't depend on any one channel to deliver their "creations".
- the_only_law 6y agoI’ve wondered too. I remember looking into the various conspiracies / scandals from a few years back (Elsagate and similar things) and some of it was just extremely bizarre (and likely frightening to some kids) and just had such a mass of content. There are all sorts of conspiracies from some psyop stuff to AI/ML generated content. I have not ideas what to even begin to think. The easiest answer I suppose is just some companies found an easy way to mass produce videos towards an demographic that will not mind mindless clicking, and that that will translate to more views and more money. That still doesn’t explain the bizarre and disturbing content some of them put out.
- c3534l 6y agoHaving never seen any of these videos, that video is weirdly engaging. It has something logical to it, but its way more abstract than a true story. Its actually really fascinating that there is some thread to follow along with and a certain amount of surprise even if it is largely meaningless. It makes me think that once you've memorized all the narrative and visual tropes of western media, your bog standard reality TV is probably as intellectually engaging as videos like these. Which isn't to say its okay for kids, but that you probably shouldn't be watching daytime TV any time soon if you value your own brain as much as you value your kids'.
- vkou 6y ago> It makes me think that once you've memorized all the narrative and visual tropes of western media, your bog standard reality TV is probably as intellectually engaging as videos like these. As someone who can't help but look for those narrative and visual tropes, I can indeed confirm that the bog standard reality TV show, and the vast majority of non-reality TV shows are about this intellectually un-engaging.
- nerdponx 6y agoI also wonder if it's somehow specifically engineered to keep your attention. The alternating yellow and black lines specifically seemed like a weird feature, and it made me wonder if the whole thing wasn't somehow calibrated, rather than low-effort and arbitrary.
- gilmore606 6y agoIt's very common for multiple version of these videos to be uploaded with only aesthetic differences, presumably for the next round of engagement optimization.
- jowsie 6y agoFolding Ideas has a good video on these specific kind of content farm videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8
- mortehu 6y agoI'd recommend blocking the entire channel each time you see a video like this, and also go through the top hundred recommended videos or so and block all the channels with content you don't like. I've only blocked a few dozen channels, and we barely see any of this stuff now. The UI might be a bit confusing, because you can only block a channel if you're currently viewing a video from it. I do wish I could just whitelist channels, or get automatic recommendations for channels to block.
- james-skemp 6y agoWhew. I was afraid it was going to link to Super Simple Songs. For what it's worth, we found https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSimpleSongs https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSimpleSongs via the Khan Academy Kids app. They have select videos (from what we've seen) from this particular creator that they break up into the app and make responsive. So for example they may play a bit of 'Do you know the muffin man,' then pause it and ask the child to tap on the ___. Or tap and count the ___. Given how he's been developing, and that we'll break into random songs that we learned from the series, I've no complaints with a few channels.
- zeckalpha 6y agoWe’ve been happy with Super Simple Songs, and they play on Echo, Apple Music, too, for a less visually stimulating experience.
- temp8964 6y agoYes. We have noticed these too. And there were videos of silly kids doing silly things (like pretend fighting / chasing). And characters just walking inside video games (like Minecraft). Totally pointless and meaningless videos. Constantly and automatically play one after another. A single video would appear harmless. But hundreds (maybe thousands) of these? Horrible.
- ericlewis 6y agoour kids also have found things like this which lead to YouTube bans in the house - now, they 1.5 and 4yo both seek content that is far more engaging than the above video. One helpful thing was raising the age for their YouTube kids.. I don't want them just navigating YouTube alone.
- puppable 6y agoPersonally, I would say I learned very much when I first watched these videos on YouTube. Not about colors, though.
- segmondy 6y agoYou don't think he remembers the numbers and colors? He might, he's just not saying it. When my kid first recited their 1-10 or ABC. They didn't recite a few. One day out of the blue they went from beginning to end. You might think they are not learning but they are soaking up and just might take some time before they start expressing their knowledge. That said, I would be annoyed to have that play on repeatedly.
- WalterBright 6y agoMy opinion on this isn't popular. One time I was discussing Sesame Street with a friend who said how great it was at teaching kids - his kid knew the alphabet when entering school. I asked how often his kid watched SS. With a back of envelope calculation, I pointed out that it took SS several hundred hours to teach his kid the alphabet. I.e. it was the most inefficient, time-consuming teaching method ever devised. (I was taught the alphabet in first grade by singing the alphabet song. This was before SS.)
- throwawaw 6y agoDo you think your friend might have been using the alphabet as an example of what Sesame Street had taught his kid, and not as a complete catalogue?
- WalterBright 6y agoHe was pretty specific.
- lupire 6y agoSesame Street doesn't only teach alphabet.
- WalterBright 6y agoIt's completely passive. It's not how people learn. It looks like it should be educational, but let's face it. It's a great way to distract the kids so the parents can take a break. Parents need make no effort, just push a button. No wonder it's popular.
- ruffrey 6y agoThis, a hundred times. YouTube kids has content addiction to a science. My kid still asks for YouTube at age 6. It’s been banned from our house since he was 3.
- didgeoridoo 6y agoWith my 1 year old, we used YT Kids videos in the hospital in place of benzos during central line dressing changes (a relatively painless but annoying and time-consuming procedure that they need to remain very still for). The slack-jaw lobotomized YT Kids look is honestly scarier than the benzo loopies. I think we’re done with it.
- hahajk 6y agoI thought you were going to link to one of those “egg opening” videos. They’re the reason I don’t turn on youtube. The terrible thing is that one of them made it on to Netflix... now I have to get rid of Netflix because its all she’ll watch if she sees its icon. I wish there was a way to block specific shows on Netflix.
- mindhash 6y agoThe worst thing is as a parent you are not in control of what is recommended or what kids can watch. I wish they allowed flagging videos through history but yt has other priorities I guess
- howaboutnope 6y ago> it was like he was being lobotomized, and begged for them constantly https://imgur.com/a/8xPGPJ7 https://imgur.com/a/8xPGPJ7 Thanks to people dismissing ElsaGate as "just weird videos", that issue never got the attention it actually deserved. Aside from the countless rationalizations, part of the blame is on YT in my books; mostly for saying "it's fine, we'll deal with it" instead of collecting data, analyzing it, and making the results public to warn parents.
- skinkestek 6y agoGenerally agree and I loathe those (and many educational videos generally) so much that I far prefer that my kids watch Grizzy or Tom & Jerry, that is at least really funny sometimes and contrary to pretend-instructional so far out that it is obviously not real. (Although what I like most is to sit and watch crazy repair videos together with them: welding of excavator arms, disassembly and restoration of everyday items etc.) However, credit were credit is due: one of my kid spent some time on those channels around age 4 to 5 and actually surprised me by having learned English numbers, and not superficially: I was totally amazed when that kid could not only count to 20 in English but also instantly translate between the language his mother talks and English. Compared to other kids I know just being able to consistently count to 20 in one language might often be a challenge. A little more criticism: in addition to pretend-educational videos which I find mightily annoying there were also a number of kids-unboxing-box-after-box-of-expensive-toys which seemed to me to be the worst.