Raising Your Kids on YouTube -
Welcome to the Dark Side
by Theruni Liyanage
Child language socialisation is the idea that the development of a human being is intrinsically linked to their participation in the day to day activities of ordinary life. It sounds theoretical, but we see it happening all around us - parents engage with their toddlers as they go about their day with the idea of exposing the child to the language they speak and to develop their social and communicative skills. With the demands of modern day life however, parents are compelled more and more to find technological alternatives to provide their children with the enrichment they need.
With over a 100 million downloads, YouTube Kids is one of the leading internet based service providers targeting children (under the age of 12). It’s fast becoming the go-to app to provide children with infotainment: it's fun, it's easy and the content is vouched for by Google themselves.
However, using YouTube Kids is not as simple as switching on a device and handing it off to your child to traverse the varied content that is available. There are many darker elements to an automation that profits off of retaining the attention of children.
Despite being an American company, YouTube Kids caters to children all over the globe, a fact that is not even remotely adequately represented in the content. The family vlogging channels, toy channels, cartoon channels which find their home on the site feature mostly able-bodied, attractive white actors presenting a heavily doctored image of life. Children also often pay little heed or are unable to engage critically with the fact that some of the content that they are watching are paid promotions, and may internalize these misrepresented and commodified ideals which may be incompatible with what you are trying to teach your child.
The varieties of English that your child will be exposed to may also not be the language or language varieties which you want in your child’s life, as most of the content featured is created by or aimed at the English speaking West. And as the word ‘content’ itself implies - most of the material shared on the platform are produced by content creation companies or individuals who are financially motivated, and are not held to the same standards which, for example television broadcasting channels are held to. They do not present the traditional ‘children’s programming’ that we were used to, which actively tried to teach children good values (‘Mr. Roger’s Neighbourhood’ springs to mind). While some channels do take their roles more seriously, it is best that you take an active part in reviewing the content your child consumes.
As mentioned, channel owners themselves are incentivized to prioritise view time, resulting in flashy, exciting videos that may desensitize your child to more traditional modes of learning in the future, such as the school environment. The fact that the YouTube algorithm functions to provide the child with content increasingly curated to their personal preferences doesn’t help either, and even adults find the instant gratification it provides addictive.
Another major issue which is not talked about nearly enough is that allowing children on the internet, even within a space created by a heavily regulated company exposes them to the machinations of bad actors who game the system. Amongst issues that have popped up in YouTube and YouTube Kids are instances of child endangerment or child abuse. These are issues that are unfortunately not mainstream, especially in this part of the world. The Elsagate scandal exposed content creators who populated YouTube and YouTube Kids with animated content that featured such popular figures as Peppa the Pig, Spiderman, Queen Elsa, Batman and the Joker engaging in various acts that were believed to be either content aimed at pedophiles, or malicious attempts to groom children into normalising various acts of depravity. YouTube Kids is a playground that you can’t let your child play in without supervision.
If you are a parent thinking of using software technologies to ensure that your child grows up culturally and linguistically competent, it is imperative that you are with your child in this. As long as you make it a point to interact with your child while they watch these videos, and engage critically with the material (discussing the good and the bad, not shooting down whatever the child may be interested in), YouTube and other similar web applications could play an as important role in child language socialisation as other traditional media have done throughout our lives.