YouTube is not responsible for traumatised toddlers. Businesses are.
This article addresses one of the world’s most important decisions of our time. Children of all ages are entering a world of unprecedented freedom with the advent of the mobile internet. Those with the very weakest of decision-making capabilities are being deeply affected by the content distributed out by mindless, money-hungry individuals, with their eyes set on profiting from those who are most vulnerable.
My name is Bilal Pervez and I’m an entrepreneur. I’m the founder of Chube Media, a company that uses technology to improve the organisation of children’s videos in a safe, secure, and entertaining way. I have put child safety at the core of everything I’ve done for the last two years. Today, I want to let the public know what’s really happening to kids in our transforming digital landscape.
To begin with, I want to talk about open networks and closed networks, and what they mean for children on the open internet.
YouTube is an open network. Anyone can upload onto it, anyone can comment on it, and anyone can view it. YouTube’s openness is what catalysed the platform’s explosive growth in 2005. It made the website a perfect fit for Google, who publicly stated their commitment to an open internet world in 2004, and completed their acquisition in 2006.
YouTube Kids, a child-friendly YouTube app made by Google, also uses an open network . However, by relying on algorithms and filters, videos considered inappropriate for kids seep into the app regularly. It has been this way for three years, and the ongoing number of public exposés against it have done nothing more to change it. The truth is, nothing will. The kids content on both YouTube and YouTube Kids will not change, or become safer, and this quote from Google’s ‘Owner’s Manual’ will help us understand why:
“Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
Google is about fairness and equal opportunity - not curation. Though YouTube Kids have given parents the option to curate their own streams, the app will not curate, regulate or manage their own streams as part of their service — not effectively, at least. Parents are still reporting bad videos in the app, and I don’t think it’s necessarily Google’s fault. As a literature grad, I’m prone to read things a bit awkwardly, so forgive me if I am incorrect, but I read this statement as Google making the organisation of the world’s information universally accessible. Curation will not fit in with this “universally accessible”, because everyone should have a fair chance at getting their content out there, so long as they follow the rules of tagging, sitemaps, and keywords.
It is this form of tagging that has allowed new YouTube channels enter the kids entertainment industry with no prior experience and rack in the most views. This is done by exploiting the algorithms used to auto-curate general searches, and applying them to kids video related searches.
It is incredibly lazy, because it means kids will continue to watch videos of puppets saying ‘shitass’, Peppa Pig shooting other pigs, and tutorials on how to sharpen knives, because the algorithm favours sensational content associated with popular names.
“To expose children to this content is abuse.”, says James Brindle , because children have copycat minds that will act based on what they see. Just last month a mother in New South Wales found her child enacting sexual behaviour in school after being accidentally exposed to pornographic content on YouTube Kids.
“My 7yr old was acting like them, being disrespectful, and not doing what I say because of her watching them. As soon as I told her to stop watching them, I noticed she wasn’t acting that way anymore,” says Saundra in the Variety.com comments.
Here is an example from a Dailymotion “kids videos” search. The plot begins with Spiderman shooting Elsa with a rocket, and Elsa seeking revenge by watching Spiderman get run over.
People target YouTube as the wrongdoer, but they not tend to see how this is a problem with the permeated structure of an open internet for everybody, rather than Google’s problem. It’s a question of open vs closed networks and whether they should be adjusted based on age groups. As Andy Burrows of the NSPCC Associate Head of Child Safety Online told The Sun, “it is still far too easy for children to come across disturbing clips featuring their favourite cartoon characters’”.
It’s not parents’ faults either. Parents will undoubtedly agree that they would like to not use their smart devices with their children, but find this difficult when their devices are what their kids desire the most.
This is an internet structural problem that entrepreneurs in the children’s entertainment business need to work on. And by that I mean, we should move children from open networks to closed networks on the internet. In the realm of kids videos, my company Chube Media has helped ease that transition by creating a closed network for kids shows that is cheap to access, easy to use, fun, and above all, safe.
Chube: A closed network
I made Chube in 2015 to save parents time by offering a quick way to lock video controls. When the safety issues about YouTube emerged, Chube responded by evolving into a safe place for children to watch videos that are age appropriate, educational, and entertaining. What continues to make us so special is our video player, which uses a locked touch screen and has an auto-repeat feature that lets parents replay favourite videos automatically. We are gearing to becoming the ultimate security solution for kids on popular digital devices.
Just like Disney Channel, Nick Jr, CBeebies, and so on, Chube is a textbook example of a closed network. It’s free on Chube to stream unlimited content from a variety of industry leading production companies. Every piece of content goes through a strict security evaluation procedure to make sure every show is entertaining, has educational value, and is made by an experienced set of children’s video producers. Our parent community @chubelife help us curate and tailor our content portfolios, assuring complete safety for children watching videos on the app.
I urge anyone reading this article to share it and spread the word about Chube. This is what will inevitably become the start of the transition from using open networks with children to using safer and better closed networks.
Website: www.chubemedia.com
iOS App Store Link: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/chube-kids-baby-videos-lock/id1162301754
Video:
Special thanks to:
Chris Merron, who was vital in making the app. You can find his app development startup Stick Media here.
Ellie Goddard and Rebecca Rhodes who have been operating our parent community. Extremely talented with social media, they have played a big part in multiplying our userbase. You can find their baby modelling pages at @max_georgej, @judehollins17 and @childmodeladvice
Fulya Tras, who has been leading our physical product division. Fulya’s talents runs across many disciplines, which is why her creative design agency designpincer is absolute winner.
James Bridle, who wrote a groundbreaking technological review of YouTube and YouTube Kids. You can find his book “New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future” here, his recent Ted Talk here, and his tweets at @jamesbridle
John Biggs, who wrote an article that inspired me to get Chube to where it is today. Check out John’s podcast “Techtopia”, an inspiring weekly peak into what different elements of the future might look like (you can see our episode about Johnny Johnny Yes Papa here)
Sonia Livingstone, who fights against the stigma of kids using digital devices every day, through her groundbreaking research, books like “The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age (Connected Youth and Digital Futures)”, and a constantly fresh Twitter feed about children’s digital safety at @Livingstone_S.
My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bilalrare/
