How Children's Content On The Internet Is Indicative Of a Larger Problem With The Internet

[Fe 26]

Hey, transformers are good for your brain. Either by figuring them out yourself, or learning to follow the directions they shipped with. Lego is similar and does a better job though.

[Cowutopia]

I didn't take it as an attack or anything I just wanted to be clear. There is insipid branded content available as well. It's a little less odd but I don't feel comfortable just plopping her down in front of Netflix kids.

Two shows we like a lot are Blue's Clues and Team Umizoomi. When we watch the shows ask for responses and engagement, and I pause the program and work through the questions with her. The only time I'll use the tv as a babysitter I'll put a movie like Ponyo on if I really need to get some things done, something that ends when it is over so she has to come to me for the next thing.

[A Robot Bit Me]

I didn't take it as an attack or anything I just wanted to be clear. There is insipid branded content available as well.

For the sake of argument, how different/how much more insipid is this stuff than the countless hours of ads we grew up watching? Surely we watched more branded content as kids than this upcoming or any generation, even if we only consider actual, show-interrupting ads as ads and not the shows themselves, often themselves cheap ads for toys as has been pointed out (He-man, Transformers, etc.).

Sometimes when I get really bummed out I just watch old cereal and toy ads and Nickelodeon bumpers for an hour or two and I know you've all done this, too. That we even have that impulse is pretty messed up.

But we turned out alright.

[Josh]

The past is better, and the future is scary is the take away from this article, right?

[Cowutopia]

That's not really what I'm trying to get at. Dunlap really covered the important stuff very well.

More and more of what we are exposed to are the result of complex data mining algorithms and is less and less human. It is becoming harder to separate fact from fiction or advertisements, even as adults. (As adults I think we can understand that old cartoons were little more than marketing vehicles for toys.) Nobody seems to be in control of any of this. What used to be saturday morning cartoons, movie night, or TGIF is now a constant stream of targeted entertainment that are capturing lives like a drug. People are basing important life decisions based on a constant stream of misleading, unchecked, unscientific information, and it is hard to form a clear filter while still exposing yourself to a big picture.

I don't think the future is any scarier than it ever was to anyone, but these are problems that I think need to be addressed.

[Fe 26]

I think it was slightly touched on, on the first page of this discussion, and it relates a lot to the current problems with Russia, but something that bothers me is how well packaged complete horse shit now is. And a lot of people very old and very young don't know how to look deeper. We saw it during the election with all the fake ads from russia. We see it beyond the election with fake news articles and ads on both sides.

We now live in a world where this:



and this



and this



can all have similar production values and music ques.


You can go through this thread,

http://boards.4chan.org/gif/thread/11565865

listen at the music ques and look at how the film is edited. This shit eats up the brains of stupid people. They can't discern polished turds from truth.

[Satsuki]

That's why I'm saying, the "durrrr algorithm youtubes are scary!" is a dumb argument, and totally got lost in the weeds of what the dude was trying to say. I disagree with Cow's summation that this is the dark age of entertainment, BUT I do believe that these content mills (who manufacture memes, videos, etc.) should be investigated. I don't even necessarily mean prosecuted to the full extent of the jam, I'm just curious who these content creators are, how much they make, who they work for, etc. I think we're at a far bleaker part of journalism's history - when some really simple, fascinating stuff like this gets watered down to "durrrr cartoons were cooler when I was a kid." Sooooo not a worthwhile argument.

[Doc Holliday]

I’m still reading the article, but I just realized the internet needs to be treated like the wilderness, like the woods behind the backyard where you know hogs, bobcats, and wolfs are. Just like you wouldn’t let your child roam the woods unattended until they were big enough and learned enough to defend themselves, you shouldn’t let your kids explore the internet until prepared.

[AstroBlue]

I think the YouTube Kids thing is the most clear example for people to see that this model of curation is deficient. With so much good educational content out there, it makes no sense to me why any parent would see their kids open kinder eggs and think that's good. So, Cowutopia, and other parents here: why do you let your kids on YouTube Kids instead of a curated platform, like Netflix or Disney? Even the straight entertainment on those platforms set ups coherent stories.

My son (who is 2) mostly watches curated content and I try to watch and engage with him about what’s happening in the show as much as possible. Thankfully all Australian children’s content is essentially curated by our version of the PBS. So we have an advertisement free channel that has Peppa Pig, Wiggles, Sesame Street, Octonauts, etc etc. With free streaming apps of all this content. The only big quality kid content that it doesn’t have is Paw Patrol, Lion Guard etc.

But my parents in law did show him Wiggles on YouTube, on the iPad, and if you keep watching this it will eventually devolve into videos where someone is systematically opening eggs and playing with the squishy toys in a repetitive way. Kids’ absolutely love this shit and soon he was screaming for “pad egg”.

There in lies the problem, this content is the product of big data, humans emulating that data, machines emulating the humans emulating etc , it’s so incredibly distilled and focused into what kids want to watch. If I sat him in front of YouTube and let it go he would stay there zombified for ages, who knows what he would watch; if he watches a curated channel he will get bored at slow bits and go off and make cars with duplo. All of the curated channels have storylines, story ebs, language, some educational content; even the worst shows have problems, issues or conflicts which characters need to be overcome. This user generated content has NOTHING, it’s repetitive, has almost no language and is SYSTEMICALLY made to be addictive and keep the child there for as long as possible.

[Fe 26]

...we've finally did it. We built machines to create what we could or would not create: porn for 2 year olds.