By Joshua Garrison
Youtube is the place to go for everything imaginable. Many don’t know there is a darker side under the surface that gravitates towards young children because they are easy to exploit. Some of the more seedy characters use children to gain views and money by posting sexually explicit content masked as children’s entertainment. For example, the extremely lewd Spiderman and Elsa video saga that graced the airwaves of Youtube starting in June of 2016. Youtube is receiving scrutiny for allowing people to populate the youtube kids app and kids youtube recommended sections An expert from the website Pedi Mom explained how undoubtedly problematic this is. “I wish I could say that they are isolated incidents but unfortunately I cannot. My research has led me into a horrifying world where people create cartoons glorifying dangerous topics and scenarios such as self-harm, suicide, sexual exploitation, trafficking, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and gun violence which includes a simulated school shooting. All of these videos were found on YouTube Kids, a platform that advertises itself to be a safe place for children 8 years old and under”(Dr. Free N. Hess of Pedi mom).
Youtube is also receiving hate for breaking the law by collecting the data of children under thirteen without the parent’s permission. The Federal Trade Commission or FTC had to hijack the site and fix the issue for them and added a clause to COPPA or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that was originally put in effect in 2000 that restricts taking data from minors and states that creators must mark their videos or channel kid-friendly or not. If one neglects to do so and their video contains not kid-friendly content, they will be fined up to up to $42,530 per violation. This presumably meant that these kinds of content creators lose a significant amount of revenue from ads.
In the end, although many creators thought the restrictions on “children’s” Youtube videos were unfair, it was a necessary step that had to be taken given the fact that child manipulation was plaguing all of Youtube.