2020 YOUNG KIDS AND YOUTUBE - Common Sense Media

[Pages:52]2020

YOUNG KIDS AND YOUTUBE:

HOW ADS, TOYS, AND GAMES DOMINATE VIEWING

COMMON SENSE IS GRATEFUL FOR THE GENEROUS SUPPORT AND UNDERWRITING THAT FUNDED THIS RESEARCH REPORT:

Eva and Bill Price

Bezos Family Foundation

Margaret and Will Hearst

Craig Newmark Philanthropies

2020

YOUNG KIDS AND YOUTUBE:

HOW ADS, TOYS, AND GAMES DOMINATE VIEWING

Credits

Authors: Jenny S. Radesky, M.D., Department of Pediatrics, University of Michigan (U of M) Medical School Alexandria Schaller, Department of Pediatrics, U of M Medical School Samantha L. Yeo, Department of Pediatrics, U of M Medical School Heidi M. Weeks, Ph.D., Department of Nutritional Sciences, U of M School of Public Health Michael B. Robb, Ph.D., Common Sense Media

Copy editor:

Jennifer Robb

Designers:

Emely Vertiz and Dana K. Herrick

Acknowledgements:

We thank Ranya Alkhayyat, Olivia Richards, Caroline McLaren, and Hayden Le for their assistance with data collection and coding. Dr. Radesky thanks Lynn and Stuart White for research-related support

The findings, conclusions, opinions, and recommendations expressed in this material are solely the responsibility of the authors and are presented independent of any relationship Common Sense or the University of Michigan may have with Google or YouTube.

Suggested citation: Radesky, J. S., Schaller, A., Yeo, S. L., Weeks, H. M., & Robb, M.B. (2020). Young kids and YouTube: How ads, toys, and games dominate viewing, 2020. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media.

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Key Findings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Methodology and Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Overall Study Design. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Participants and Data Collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Video Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Content Coding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

What Are Children Watching on YouTube?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 What Is Being Advertised to Children, and How Much?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 What Kinds of Negative Content Are Children Seeing, and How Much?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 What Kinds of Positive Content Are Children Seeing, and How Much? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Do Parents Use YouTube with Their Children?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Conclusions and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Limitations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Parents' Decision Guide to YouTube for Young Kids. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Follow These Steps to Be a YouTube Sleuth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 What Parents and Kids Can Do . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

INTRODUCTION

CHILDREN ARE AVID USERS of YouTube. In 2020, for the first time, children younger than 8 are watching more videos online than on live TV or through streaming services, for an average of 39 minutes a day (Rideout & Robb, 2020). This is more than double the amount of time with online videos than just three years ago. The 2020 Common Sense data on children age 0 to 8 shows that one-third of children are watching online videos every single day (Rideout & Robb, 2020), while the Pew Research Center reports that 53% of children younger than 11 view YouTube daily, with 35% viewing multiple times per day (Auxier et al., 2020).

Although YouTube Kids was released in 2015 to provide a site for children to watch YouTube content without the data collection or behavioral advertising practices on the main YouTube platform, young children continue to use YouTube often, in some studies more frequently than YouTube Kids (Radesky & Weeks et al., 2020).

YouTube's main platform contains vast amounts of content directed to children. A 2019 Pew Research Center analysis of the most popular YouTube videos found that many were child-directed, and these had accrued triple the views of non-child-directed videos (Van Kessel et al., 2020).

However, the quality of children's content on YouTube--and potential positive or negative influence on a child's well-being-- varies widely. Many YouTube channels focus on do-it-yourself (DIY) videos that offer instruction on crafts, art, music, and other hands-on activities. Well-researched educational content creators, such as Sesame Workshop and PBS Kids, also post their videos on YouTube to be viewed by children. But other content creators may have limited training in child development or best practices for child-centered design, and the educational quality of YouTube videos is largely unknown. Past work also shows that popular YouTube videos targeting children promote nutritionally poor products in advertisements (Tan et al., 2018) and in the videos themselves (Coates et al., 2019).

Child-directed YouTube videos have also been noted to have high levels of commercialism (Craig & Cunningham, 2017) (in toy unboxing videos, for example), but this has not been studied empirically. In addition, there is no research on the quantity or quality of the advertising that appears on YouTube during videos viewed by children. Studies of advertising in children's apps have shown a high prevalence of manipulative or disruptive ad designs as well as adult-oriented ad content that is easily clickable by child users (Meyer et al., 2018). YouTube's own policies state that certain kinds of ads with adult themes are not acceptable, including "content that is made to appear appropriate for a family audience but contains adult themes, including sex, violence, vulgarity, or other depictions of children or popular children's characters, that are unsuitable for a general audience" (YouTube, n.d.-a).

Children can also easily access age-inappropriate content on YouTube. Almost half (46%) of parents say their child younger than 11 has accessed inappropriate videos on the site, and 65% say they are concerned about the types of videos recommended to their child (Auxier et al., 2020). Interviews and focus groups by Common Sense also suggest that parents are concerned about their children viewing inappropriate content (Peebles et al., under review). Past work shows that there is a wide breadth of inappropriate YouTube content that children may stumble upon, even in cartoons (Kaushal et al., 2016; Papadamou et al., 2020), a genre children often gravitate toward.

Despite the fact that 1 billion hours are viewed on YouTube every day (YouTube, n.d.-b), little has been published on the content that children view on the main platform, what advertising young children may encounter on the site, and how viewing behaviors correlate with child or family characteristics. One prior study created a coding rubric for the quality of children's videos on YouTube, but did not undertake a wide-scale assessment of YouTube content, nor did it link viewing behaviors with child and family traits (Neumann & Herodotou, 2020).

? 2020 COMMON SENSE MEDIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

1 YOUNG KIDS AND YOUTUBE: HOW ADS, TOYS, AND GAMES DOMINATE VIEWING, 2020

Goals

Therefore, the goals of this study were to answer the following questions:

? What types of videos are children age 0 to 8 watching on YouTube?

? What is being advertised to children? How is this done, and how much?

? What kinds of negative content do children see on YouTube, and how much?

? What kinds of positive content do children see on YouTube, and how much?

? How do any of the above differ according to the child's and family's background?

To achieve these goals, Common Sense analyzed 1,639 YouTube videos watched by 0- to 8-year-olds. Between March 26 and April 1, 2020, a total of 191 parents who participated in Common Sense's 2020 study provided a list of the last videos their children watched on the main YouTube site. We chose to focus on the main site (), rather than YouTube Kids, because of the high number of children who use this platform, the availability of children's content, concerns about content and advertising on this platform, and feasibility of data collection by parents. A total of 1,639 YouTube videos were coded using Common Sense's YouTube evaluation guidelines. Further details are included in the methodology section. Recommendations for YouTube design and policy are included at the end of the report.

2 YOUNG KIDS AND YOUTUBE: HOW ADS, TOYS, AND GAMES DOMINATE VIEWING, 2020

? 2020 COMMON SENSE MEDIA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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