Who am I really mad at?
As a parent of a toddler I struggle with screen time. Like every parent. And like every parent I’ve left my child watching something decent, might I say even educational, on YouTube – and then was shocked and horrified to return to see YouTubers yelling at the screen and fast-cutting until I’m dizzy watching it.
Yeah, if you’re a parent and you’ve left your kid on YouTube, you know what I’m talking about. The grown men who decide they’re going to make children’s content by dressing up like idiots, or acting like complete fools (usually it’s both) along with their friends, and a bunch of edits that are so fast that you keep watching because your nervous system doesn’t know what’s coming next.
It’s a genre. Or at least Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini thinks it is, and calls it “Hyper Aggressive Adult Men Acting Like Toddlers”. If you watch any of it, first off your IQ drops by three points per second; but second off you’ll notice it is insulting to anyone with half a brain.
The men on these channels act like human cartoons. Every expression is strained. Close ups. Bad FX emanating around the person’s face. It’s all designed to bypass a child’s critical thinking and basically trap them into watching.
The worst part is these guys don’t look like they want to entertain kids. They’ve got beards, five o’clock shadow, they look (and act) more like neighbours you’d have to call the police on three times a week for partying too loud than children’s entertainers. Compare that with Mr Rogers and his friendly neighbourhood or Jim Henson’s Muppets. Both spoke to children softly, gently, and sincerely, and they respected the emotional complexity that children are capable of. Meanwhile, these yahoos on YouTube are yelling and screaming because if they don’t mimic a seizure every 10 seconds they’re afraid kids will click away.
When I see my boy watching this garbage, he’s just staring dumbfounded at the screen – the expression on his face isn’t interest or joy, it’s more like he’s not sure what he’s watching. But he keeps going back for more. And the YouTube algorithm just keeps feeding him more.
Which brings me to the algorithm. Now that I’ve seen this idiocy firsthand and decided I don’t want these morons’ cynical attempts to farm attention affecting my child, no problem, I’ll just block them. Oh, wait. You can’t block accounts on YouTube. But surely on a kid’s account you can? Oh wait, you can’t do it there either.
All you can do is set the child’s account for his age range and the algorithm feeds him content supposedly suited for him. And that is exactly how my boy was introduced to these banal imbeciles yelling and screaming and cynically “entertaining” kids to finance their ability to party in Miami Beach.
But why can’t we block these accounts? Because we are the product. It’s not about making sure that kids get to watch content that is good for them, it’s about making sure that we’re glued permanently to our screens. If we’re watching the decline of Western civilisation in YouTube video form, then so be it, but YouTube wants its views.
But I know all this. So then who am I mad at?
Me.
I knew YouTube had the potential to be incredible or just a cesspool of visual trash meant to rot your child’s brain and give money to people with no shame about making crap. I tried to keep my boy off it. And when he was on it, I used to watch with him, but somewhere along the line, maybe I went to the toilet, I don’t know, but I came back and the algorithm had served up adults wearing solid block colours, screaming and shouting, and jumping on cars, and masquerading as children’s entertainment (but who are more likely just guys who found a grift that pays for their sports car).
Do I sound bitter?
Yeah. I probably am. But we all should be. People who make content to trap children into watching by cynically playing to the most innate cues of colour, over-the-top emotion, and fast cuts that are frightening to watch, are not doing anything good for the world. You’re making garbage that does nothing but melt our children’s brains a little each time, and watching your video leaves us all a little worse off.
So who am I mad at?
The YouTubers, YouTube? Myself for letting this happen? Sure, I could go with self-responsibility, but I’m going to put this on YouTube and its owner, Google. When it comes to kids you should have some respectable limits for what is and isn’t kids’ programming. And a bunch of yahoos running and screaming and doing fast cuts isn’t for kids. It’s for idiots.
