Good News For Parents: Much Needed Step Taken by YouTube
Nowadays, in the world of technology, it is nearly impossible to keep children out of smart hi-tech gadgets. It is not only children who find these devices attractive. But parents also rarely hesitate to hand over such devices to children as they get some peaceful and non-disturbing time as a tradeoff. The main conflicting issue in all this scenario is the content children see and hear. There are many cartoons and thousands of videos on YouTube which are apparently meant for children. Yet their impact on children’s psychology is really adverse.
One of the prominent channels which also affects badly on my son is Ryan Toys Review. It has a simple motto behind it. Ryan loves toys. Review of toys for kids by a kid is the basic purpose. He gives reviews on cars, Thomas and Friends, Playdoh, Disney Toys, Lego, superheroes, monster trucks, minions, surprise eggs and much more. What I noticed is a big change in my son’s behavior is that he slowly started disliking his own toys. And he wanted to have one which Ryan has. He sometimes got so much impressed by him that he started misbehaving with us on toys issue. He wanted to have a new toy every other day. After a few days, both of us realized that this is an influence of Ryan Toys Review he was obsessed with those days. We immediately took an action and banned that program.
The Google-owned video sharing platform has become littered with depraved and sinister videos. YouTube is facing a big problem on its end because of the nature of indecent or unaccepted content for kids. On one side, some videos cheat parents as their audio is entirely different from what’s going on screen. People making such videos attract children by using famous cartoon characters like Spiderman, Elsa, and Superman, by the name of channel Elsagate, featuring content that is entirely inappropriate for kids. They involve things like sex acts, fetishes, cannibalism and abuse. This topic has already gained mainstream media attraction, with articles written in both The BBC and The Guardian.
There is a lot of disturbing content as well which shows cartoon characters in pain and distress. Children being kidnapped and lost in some. While in many, characters are showing disrespect by not following their parents’ order or instructions. YouTube has come under pressure a lot. And this is the reason it took a step to make an army of 10,000 workers to combat the disturbing content on its site. “I have seen how some bad actors are exploiting our openness to mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm” YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said in a blog post last week.
As a result, management has already started looking for hiring workers. The team will be a combination of contractors and employees. YouTube CEO, Ms. Susan Wojcicki said that company will expand the use of “machine-learning” technology, a new form of artificial intelligence, to flag videos or comments that show hate speech or harm to children. Besides Google, Facebook in may also said that it would hire 3000 more people to review posts and videos.
We really hope that this step of tech companies yield fruitful and desired results.
An interesting read about kids movies
