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My 2 year old always makes her way from ABC Kids / Playschool videos to these ones:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QG4n3-rKTs

They regularly have a half billion views, and are literally just someone opening Kinder Surprise toys and playing with them.

I have no idea why she loves them, but she just stays captivated until we put her back to Playschool.

For reference, she's never seen a Kinder Surprise in her life, or seen Frozen (or any Disney movie), or anything that would explain her draw to these videos.

As for the videos she does watch, at 1.5yrs old she already knew how to pick a new Related Video, or drag the slider back to rewatch a video, and will happily watch the same Playschool episode or Peppa Pig clip non stop for hours if we let her.

This new generation who have never known anything other than internet connected touch screens is truly fascinating to watch. Using tablets and phones is as natural as walking or playing.

I am getting sick of cleaning the TV though, since we can't manage to teach her that it's not touch screen!

The comment section of that video definitely seems to confirm the hypothesis.

It is near-majority user input error, wow (sort by date, top comment sorting is disingenuous). I've argued for bayesian analysis of advertisement CTR and user-error for years, but this is beyond any model that I argue for.

On my tablets it looks like you have to swipe the related videos to the bottom then you have a comment section. So it's in the right area for how kids navigate youtube.

Image of the comment section. That's fascinating, I never realized websites like youtube were being used so extensively by younger generations. Really makes me feel old and I'm college aged.

https://i.imgur.com/ZSndTA3.png

What's that Amber/Donna comment? Is this that famed iOS phrase autocomplete thing acting up?

This looks like a toddler accidentally putting an SMS from an older sibling's device in the comment box.

My guess is they've accidentally hit siri/dictation and it's picked up someone speaking in the background.

Yep.. these unboxing are crazy and in fact we cut off youtube for our kids because of it. Worse than regular tv.

First time I showed my daughter something on my phone she immediately zoomed out. Someone else had showed her how to manipulate a touch screen, but it was pretty striking to see a toddler adeptly use a phone. This was a few years ago now.

It's all fun and games until you spot a toddler desperately trying to zoom out a magazine, as I did a few months ago.

My daughter does the same. And I'm glad because she also likes my little ponies, and for some reason there are a lot of adult my little pony spinoff videos. I saw her watching one where the ponies were making out (restricted mode on). So opening gift videos are awesome!

Last year I did an analysis of YouTube videos by mass-scraping as much data as possible. (http://minimaxir.com/2015/06/cars-2/)

I found out that the most-viewed Gaming video...is a random video of the game-of-the-movie Cars 2, due to kid viewership alone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urHuO7Zbhhw)

(I'd love to look at YouTube data again in light of the recent controversies, but it appears the API limitations have not changed since, which makes data scraping again a major hassle)

I think that there's another element to some of the automated content channels like "Toys in Japan". They make content based on comments on other videos, was hacked according to Goodwin's Law. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OoU2ck2RiY)

My pet theory is that these channels are monetized for automated click farms and they use children's content partly because kids will watch it, obfuscating the bot-clicks, and more-so that they can increase the safe threshold of bot-clicks/bot-views since children's viewing habits are to watch the same video repeatedly.

For anyone with a small child who watches Lego videos this is undoubtedly true.

Indeed, it's worth having a poke around on youtube to have a look at the numbers on speed Lego builds and on little Lego animations.

It's a lot better than a most of the insipid, overly-twee bilge that is a lot of TV targeted at kids though.

Hopefully it can also lead into watching the amazing how to videos on youtube on almost everything from drawing, to fixing bikes to fiddling with Raspberry Pis though.

This guy (h3h3) is claiming that a grownup "Prankster" Youtube channel switched to making "Spiderman and Elsa" videos for kids and made so much money in a few months the blew it all on $100k sports cars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipTJNNvW-Gw

NSFW (Swearing etc)

Isn't google not supposed to be tracking 5 year olds?

Seems weird that Google wouldn't figure out something so obvious... unless it were in their interest not to do so.

Kids are definitely able to navigate YouTube at young ages. My son at three could navigate to just about any arbitrary kid topic from any starting point. He could start from Daniel Tiger to 1980 Spider-Man to some weird Korean show with talking busses by surfing the recommendations.

Probably on their parent's account.

Put your tinfoil caps on. I personally think Google knows this fact but has monetary reasons to not disclose it. If the advertising industry expected to pay say, 4 times as much when they advertise to children, Google would be all over that.

Also, whatever your CTR is, it becomes a lot less meaningful if it turns out the majority of your users are illiterate and between the ages of 1 and 4.

I guess the money making scheme/scam here would be an advertising firm where you make commercials that incentivize viewers to put their finger on the video during the ad and appeal to toddlers.

An ad like "Put your finger on my face! Owww!" may deliver obscene "convergence" numbers. So long as the clients don't figure out the demographic of their viewers, you get the big bucks.

I teach undergrads and some, maybe even many, are "into" famous Youtubers, and many will apparently just... watch YouTube videos. As a sort of primary activity.

To me this seems bizarre, or maybe friends around my age are doing this and not talking about it—but lots of people around my age use a lot of Facebook, which I also find to be a waste of time and counter-stimulating.

Before YouTube, they might have watched TV instead, with the added complication that TV isn't on-demand and is missing entire categories of content you can get on YouTube (or other online sources). Same thing more or less.

Well, it's not really something I consider as my primary activity, but I do like to spend an hour or two on it every second day.

It's a simple way to learn something new without the need of getting too involved with the material.

(For example, Geography Now! [0]has taught me a lot of things about other countries that I would never know about and it only requires like 15 minutes of my effort once per week.)

I consider it a nice way to lose some time when I'm not trying to focus on something.

On the other hand, I haven't watched a movie in months.

Unfortunately, YouTube's recommendations really don't do a lot in helping me discovering new things. I find myself putting in a lot more effort in finding what I would actually enjoy than I would have hoped to have with everything Google knows about me.

0 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmPgObSUPw1HL2lq6H4ffA

> On the other hand, I haven't watched a movie in months.

While reading many of the comments on this thread I had trouble comprehending how anyone could spend so much time watching videos on YouTube. This aside made me realize that I probably spend five or six hours per week watching movies/tv shows. Pretty much the same thing.

i watch a lot of niche hobby channels (not gaming) on youtube as a primary activity. there is some very, very good content out there. many shows get made that would never pass muster at a "tv network".

these people are able to make enough from youtube to either supplement a good professional income, or replace it altogether. which makes everyone, both producer and viewer, very happy indeed.

I strongly prefer youtube to facebook because youtube doesn't require active use of my hands so I can do the dishes or clean my flat while learning about the history of iron[1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E__zqy6xcw

I recently started "watching YouTube" as an alternative to channel surfing on TV.

I don't appreciate most of the YouTube personalities so it can sometimes be difficult to find good stuff, but then again I don't appreciate most television programming either. But I've realized that there is value in low-brow entertainment and not every single thing you watch has to be a great production with depth.

Concerns me that the person doing that job couldn't connect the dots of kids using parent's devices.

What I see is an industry of independent content developers who have gotten very close to the simplest form possible of "push button, receive dopamine."

As an upcoming parent, I feel I just need to not overreact and be moderate. Like TV in the 1900s, I just need to not rely on YouTube to babysit my kids.

Also, maybe they're advertising a credit card to the parent or guardian that's nearby. ;)

>Concerns me that the person doing that job couldn't connect the dots of kids using parent's devices.

I wouldn't be surprised they actually did connect the dots but it was in their best interest it says it was a middle age mother.

We're a civilization of drug addicts, addicted to that hit of chemicals -- we as a species have always been like this, but the environment that we have created for ourselves is not engineered properly in that it does not regulated that hit properly. Good parenting is not going to fix that, it might delay it. But kids grow up and then they buy and do whatever they want, learning self-regulation is difficult if not impossible in the candyland our desires have created.

> As an upcoming parent, I feel I just need to not overreact and be moderate. Like TV in the 1900s, I just need to not rely on YouTube to babysit my kids.

But more likely you are just going to do it wrong and your children will resent you for it and pledge they'll react better to the unforeseen challenges they will have raising their own children

"...in the 1900s"

First time I've heard that one (surprisingly).

That one did kind of hit me, too. Wow, we're almost into the second decade of this century. Huh.

VanDeGraph has an interesting video basically agreeing with this: infants with iPads are watching toy videos and clicking randomly for hours on end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0Q5jO8I59w

This seems correct to me, I've watched my niece since she was two (she's 4 now) navigating YouTube on her mom's phone or tablet. She watches mostly kids playing with toys and the adults in costume nonsense videos mentioned below. All the vids she watches are made for YouTube (e.g. not casual one time uploads) and everything I've seen her watch has over a million views. YouTube's recommend feature let's her bounce from video to video endlessly. Also this easily allows for copycats. There a ton of channels that do the adults in costume nonsense videos now and they all have huge amounts of traffic.

http://youtu.be/OgzdDp5qfdI

"To learn the moves, I watch the videos over and over and over... I've probably watched like, millions..." -- 12-year old girl learning to dance to dub step

It's not just YouTube, but mobile gaming too.

One reason why putting those video ads in mobile games has proven so successful, is that kids will watch them non-stop in order to farm small amounts of in-game currency. After all, they can't make in app purchases without an adult's permission.

There's a lot of money to be made in having children watch hundreds of ads for that fraction-of-a-cent per view revenue.

It is children and pre-teens.

I live in LA. Two times I was amidst a famous YouTube celebrity and had no idea.

Their cover was blown the same way each time, by children probably between 9 and 13.

It looked like a celebrity run in from an episode of I Love Lucy.

I really try to stay current in order to stay relevant, but both those times really illustrated the futility of such a pursuit:

1. There's YouTube celebrities.

2. They are just as legitimate as any other celebrity.

3. Children don't seem to distinguish or rank celebrities based on their medium.

4. YouTube is much closer to pop music; there's some mass appeal that has nothing to do with how clever or sophisticated it is.

YouTube is similar to MTV in the 80s in terms of appeal and sophistication. Thats why anybody who is big there will not be considered a "real" celeb by people who dont have a clue. But dont be surprised when you see the channel DisneyCarToys advertising the new Disney movie (they already do). The amount of influence these channels have is inmense. Most people dont get it (including so called smart business people). Media as we know it will not exist in 5 years.

I live in LA too and my girlfriend is a frequent guest on a huge Youtube channel.

The majority of people who recognize her are kids from Sunday school. It's hilarious and their parents have no idea what's going on.

Im always interested in networking with YouTube influencers. Your gf have a website/social profile?

This is known children's behavior.

That was formalized at Nickolodian after Blues Clues had to play the same episode multiple times in the week, mostly by accident since the show was more expensive than normal. It surprised everyone up and down the decision and production chain, especially since they were expecting failure due to lack of novelty.

This one million times, and I wonder is someone is rendering and uploading family fingers videos automatically from a set of characters.

> they will watch the same video north of 100 times

Isn't repetitive behaviour a hint to autism?

Every child ever will watch or listen to the same audio book, video, film, song, whatever for days on end.

> They are on their mothers devices.

What?

It's not really women who are watching the videos, it's the kids. But the "views" show up on the accounts of the women who load up the video for their kids.

Well, the four-year-old didn't go out and buy a tablet or phone for themselves. They're watching videos on Moms device, while she's signed in to her Google account, hence all that activity shows up in the "Women 30-40" bucket.