Should My Child Have His Own YouTube Channel?
Am I a bad parent to want to help my child create their own channel?
My nine-year-old son recently asked if I could help him create his own YouTube channel. I thought it was a great idea. He’s a bit shy and I figured it would be a good way to bring him out of his shell. He’d also learn valuable skills by creating videos, editing them and sharing them online with his friends.
Then I stopped and thought about what a YouTube channel really means. I asked my son why he wanted a YouTube channel so badly. His first response was that one of his friends at school has his own channel and he wants one too.
That’s fine, I thought. He wants to be like his friends. No big deal. But then he added, ‘Oh, and I want to get millions of subscribers and when I’m popular I can sell my own merch.’
A sobering thought hit me. Is this what I want my child to be like? To strive to gain heaps of subscribers who will ‘like’ him. And then plan to sell his own line of plushies merchandise.
The influence of influencers
My son is allowed to watch YouTube on our family iPad, which is pretty much used solely by him. I occasionally check on him to see what he’s watching, and most of the time it’s young adult…
