Perils of Technology on Younger Minds

 Technology is so omnipresent today that it is easy to take it for granted, especially when it comes to the relationship children and young adults have with it. Research shows that children are now beginning to become aware of their online presence as early as grade school (Lorenz). Mobile devices and online content can provide a much deserved respite for overworked parents, or open up new opportunities for children to learn about the world and teach themselves. However, parents need to be wary about letting their kids have unlimited access to technology. Services such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube actually pose a risk to children’s emotional development and long term mental health.

The Social Media Generation

In a recent talk Simon Sinek discussed the complaints people have about millennials, mainly them being too entitled, narcissistic and unfocused, and talk about how that is partly a result of their unparalleled access to social media. Millennials, the age bracket born after 1994, were the first to grow up with social media as a constant fixture in their lives (Sinek). The problem with that is sites such as Facebook and Instagram don’t paint an accurate picture of the world. “We’re good at showing life is amazing even though I'm depressed.” This leads to low self esteem amongst people who rely on social media (Sinek). 

Science shows us that the act of using technology creates a rush of dopamine to the brain, but just like anything that has this effect on people. This is the same pleasure creating chemicals that get released from alcohol and gambling. And much like alcohol, social media is often discovered by young adults who need stress relief. For many kids, who discover that dopamine hit through social media use, any denial from that source becomes a potential source of trauma due to their dependence (Sinek). 

Furthermore, the abundance of technology and its instantaneous services trains younger users to expect instant gratification, which leads to a sense of impatience that can impair both their business and relationships later in life. “You wanna go on a date, you don’t even have to practice those skills (...) Just swipe right. Bang, I’m a stud!” (Sinek). As a result, many younger people express a lower level of job fulfillment and meaningful relationships, which are based on skills and experiences that cannot be sublimated by technology. Taken together, the results is a generation with lower self-esteem, lower retention rate at jobs, higher levels of mental health issues, and higher rates of suicide and drug overdoses (Sinek).

YouTube Kids Videos

Another online space that parents should be weary about, especially for younger kids, is YouTube. The website is host to an infinite number of videos aimed at preschool aged children, and the worst of them, just like social media, to exploit the hit of dopamine that younger audiences get out of browsing online content (Bridle). Much of this content is legitimate sources, clips from children’s television programs such as Sesame Street, Peppa Pig, or shows created by the likes of Cartoon Network or Disney Channel that are posted on verified YouTube accounts. There’s also bootlegged versions of this content uploaded by outside parties (Folding Ideas).

It is the third category of videos that raises serious concern. This is original. Low production quality content  created specifically to accumulate views by abusing the YouTube algorithm and children’s viewing habits (Folding Ideas). An example of this is the “surprise egg video” which is a type of video that shows someone unwrapping chocolate eggs and showing the mystery toy hidden inside. One video, produced by the channel “Blu Toys Club Surprise” has over 30,000,000; the channel has 6.3 million subscribers and has a total 10 million views just from unwrapping videos (Bridle). 

How does it get that much traffic with so little quality? It benefits from a number of factors. First is that preschool age children typically do not have a high standard of entertainment, and will watch whatever provides adequate stimulation. Secondly, this age group are incredibly passive, which means they are more likely to rewatch content or go along with autoplay than seek out new content. Secondly, they are specifically designed to  game the algorithm Since preschoolers generally do not know how to spell aside from maybe a handful of words, the titles of these videos can instead be used to fit as many view generating keywords to the video as possible. This is how you get videos with titles such as “Frozen Elsa Pregnant Colors Superheroes Spiderman Hulk Vs Venom Joker Fidget Spinners Colors for Kids” that have somehow gained over 91 thousand views (Folding Ideas). 

What really creates concern is when these videos get dark. Much of this content is incredibly disturbing, featuring beloved children characters such as Spider-man or Elsa acting out story lines that involve pregnancy, pooping, sexual activity, or violence against kids (Folding Ideas). They also often co opt whatever trends in children’s video are popular at the time, meaning kids who use YouTube’s autoplay feature will start out with a harmless video of their favorite characters singing nursery rhymes, only to end up watching a video where Mickey Mouse pleases himself (Bridle). There are multiple explanations of who is making these videos, whether they are constructed by South Asian animation studies with no understanding of cultural differences, procedurally generated by A.I. 's or constructed by online trolls to purposefully disturb kids (in many cases it is impossible to distinguish between these). However, strong evidence suggests that many of these disparate YouTube channels are owned by the same handful of shell corporations, given the fact that they often use the same footage and animation assets. This further manipulates YouTube’s algorithm, which tries to introduce diversity to their recommended videos, by creating the illusion that these videos come from different sources even though their content is nearly identical (Folding Ideas). 

The end game for all this deception is fairly straightforward, maximizing ad revenue from video monetization by optimizing the video’s searchability and online presence for unsuspecting kids. It is also reasonable to assume that YouTube is aware of this problem and simply will not acknowledge it, given that they also profit off of advertisers (Folding Ideas). YouTube has stated they will try to limit these kinds of videos, but their main focus is to introduce more algorithmic based solutions to the problem. In the meantime, children who come across the more vile of this content are being exposed to real psychological trauma (Bridle).

What Happens Now?

Parents need to account for the risks of technology on their children. Specifically, they need to take the time to understand what kind of content their children interact with and limit the amount of time children spend on their devices.

References

Bridle, James. “The Nightmare Videos of Childrens' YouTube — and What's ...” YouTube, TED, 13 July 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9EKV2nSU8w. 

Folding Ideas. “Weird Kids' Videos and Gaming the Algorithm” YouTube, 22 Nov. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKp2gikIkD8. 

Lorenz, Taylor. “When Kids Realize Their Whole Life Is Already Online.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 1 Oct. 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/when-kids-realize-their-whole-life-already-online/582916/. 

Sinek, Simon. “The Millennial Question.” YouTube, 30 Dec. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vudaAYx2IcE.