YouTube videos for young children: an exploratory study

Abstract

The consumption of videos on the Internet by young children is increasing, and therefore, when they start school, a great part of their knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes will be influenced by the contents they have consumed in social networks such as YouTube, which is considered a third educational agent in childhood, together with families and school. It is thus appropriate to know what types of contents they are consuming, the characteristics of these publications, and their interactions with these channels. The present research will try to provide answers to these questions, with an exploratory and descriptive study with a sample of five YouTube channels in Spanish and Portuguese aimed at early childhood, starting with the category "Made for Kids" from Social Blade. The results of the study allowed us to discover the characteristics of the contents which have an effect on informal learning, favoring the child's creativity and the development of abilities and competences of children. The conclusions stress the persistence of certain risks associated to the inadequate use of YouTube, inviting reflection on the need to broaden research studies on this subject matter, and the promotion of media and literacy training, through the incorporation of adequate values and behavioral rules. Emphasis is placed on implementing true media literacy in schooling during early childhood to develop the children's abilities.

Digital Capitalism and Child Labor Exploitation on YouTube

“…This aligns with children embracing YouTube as a source of entertainment and learning, and kidfluencers establishing a significant presence on this platform. Children engage with educational content on these channels (Caldeiro et al., p. 33; Suryani & Drajati, 2021) while also enjoying themselves, simultaneously cultivating a sensitivity to products or services endorsed by these kidfluencers. The content produced by kidfluencers varies but often includes digital games, makeup tutorials, or toy reviews.…”

Kids Surfing the Web: A Comparative Study in Portugal

“…Regarding the use of digital tools for enhancing learning and developing competences, according to some authors [27,28], the use of YouTube videos by young children can contribute to communication fluency development in English at the secondary education level. Additionally, the research explored the online reading habits of primary education students [29] and the types of digital books accessible to children [30], as well as problemsolving and digital transformation in kindergartens [31].…”

“…Most recent studies were based on the perceptions of teachers and parents, which means that students are heard less frequently. Furthermore, it was noted, above all, that the pandemic period has changed the form and purpose of Internet use by children and has increased and diversified the ways of learning [26,27], but it has also contributed to an increased time of exposure to screens [21] and, consequently, the risks of this use when unsupervised [23].…”

Mathematics Distance Learning with the Utilization of WhatsApp and YouTube Application for Vocational High School Students

“…To ensure that the access to videos is seamless, YouTube has the option to employ centralized and decentralized methods for balancing requests on its cache servers [16]. Especially now that YouTube is a source of knowledge that even young children can access [17]. Therefore, based on the explanation above, WhatsApp and YouTube were chosen as applications used for learning.…”