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Something is Terribly Wrong With a LOT of “Kids” Videos on YouTube
from Vigilant Citizen:
A great number of YouTube videos aimed at children contain creepy, disturbing, violent and sexual content. Some even border on child abuse. It is time to take a closer look at these videos that generate millions of views per day.
Warning: This article contains disturbing images … although they’re all taken from children’s videos.
There is no easier way to get small children to pipe down than handing them a tablet or a smartphone. Toddlers know how launch YouTube, play videos and even navigate to other “recommended videos”. This keeps children silent and entertained for long periods of time – a luxury that busy parents appreciate.
While most parents hear the children’s music playing in the background, they rarely watch every single video played by their children. When they do glimpse at the screen, they see a children’s character such as Spiderman or Princess Elsa and assume that everything is cool. But everything is not cool. There is something terribly wrong with some children’s YouTube videos and those who create them do not have the best of intentions.
A great deal of these videos contains weird, disturbing, violent and even traumatizing content. They are insidiously mixed with other children’s videos, causing them to appear as “recommended videos” by YouTube and, therefore, easily accessible to children.
I am not talking about rare, obscure videos hiding in the depths of YouTube, I am talking about channels that cumulate billions of views.
Of course, the main motivation behind these videos is profit. All it takes is a few superhero costumes and a smartphone to create videos that can potentially generate lots of revenue.
However, some of these videos are simply not right. There appears to be a motivation that goes beyond profit. Some videos trick children into watching traumatizing content, others expose them to oddly “adult” situation. Even worse, some appear to cater to adults … who like to watch children. I won’t be linking to any of these videos or channels because I don’t want to help them get more hits.
Tricking Children
Some video channels use popular children’s characters to trick them into watching violent and disturbing material. The BBC recently reported on some of these videos.
Exploiting Fears and Terror
Many videos clearly exploit children’s visceral fear and repulsion of certain things such as blood, syringes, cutting skin, tarentulas, evil clowns attacking them, etc. Children are horrified yet they cannot look away because the content is engrossing.
