Postman & Kinder Eggs

At the end of his novel Amusing Ourselves To Death, Postman states that the solution to the degradation of the collective American mind through media consumption relies on “how we watch” TV.

I can only imagine his horror if he were around to observe how children are watching YouTube today.

As articulated in this article that circulated a couple years ago, children are spending hours upon hours on the supposedly child-friendly YouTube Kids app. Most of what they are watching are algorithmically-generated videos with nonsensical keyword-vomit titles like “Wrong Heads Disney Wrong Ears Wrong Legs Kids Learn Colors Finger Family 2017 Nursery Rhymes”. These videos often feature loved children’s characters like Elsa, Peppa Pig, and the cast of Paw Patrol, but--unlike the original cartoons--sometimes contain age-inappropriate, disturbing content: including depictions of violence, blood and injury, sexuality, and generally distressing scenarios/imagery. These videos are created not through an active effort to harm children, but though algorithmic recombinations of keywords.

The path to these strange knock-off videos starts with the original branded children’s content. For example, Peppa Pig has an official YouTube channel where one can find full-length episodes of the show. A child on the YouTube Kids app might very well be fine if they were to stick to this channel. However, if autoplay is turned on, or a child has the basic motor skills to click the “Recommended Videos” in the column to the right, these off-brand videos will start playing almost immediately.

To YouTube’s credit, they’ve removed a lot of the particularly disturbing and violent videos that were under fire in articles and Facebook parenting communities. The vast majority of these videos are not outright violent or harmful, however. They’re just weird, and I question how they could possibly be helpful for a young person’s development. A particularly significant trend is that of surprise egg videos, which often feature disembodied hands and voices unpackaging small plastic toys from chocolate eggs. An Intelligencer article about this quotes several parents that describe how their children watch these videos: there is no laughter or excitement or discussion of the content, only quiet, rapt attention.

Would Postman call this “entertainment”? I suppose it must be entertaining if its racking up so many views, but it lacks that florid Vegas glitz. These videos overwhelmingly consist of regular adults unwrapping ugly plastic trinkets under yellowish lights, or of low-quality, strangely-textured animation. If Sesame Street teaches kids to love television (rather than to love learning), what do YouTube videos teach kids? Is it still television? Is it harmless? What would Postman say that it means for the American mind?