6-year-old made $11M in one year reviewing toys on YouTube | Hacker News Reader

6-year-old made $11M in one year reviewing toys on YouTube

washingtonpost.com

94 pointsjaoued112 comments

I think this is a really weird situation.

This 6year old did not make $11M. His parents did. His parents edit the videos, maintain high production value, market the channel, make a constant stream of videos starring Ryan.

It's a pretty weird situation. It is kind of insane how much money his parents are raking in because of this

I mean, if the headline was "6 year old's Parents Made $11m in One Year", I feel like you could post the comment:

"The parents did not make $11m. The kid did. The kid is on the screen, the kid plays with the toys, and is willing to continue appearing on camera."

Nah, parents did. Kid didnt hatch a scheme to make money from it. He is an employee at best.

Kids will play with toys all day long, whether or not anyone is paying attention.

The effort, and thus the payoff, was on the parts of the parents, no?

I don't mean to over-intellectualize, but here's an interesting question:

Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content?

I would say that you can hire out editing in a lot of cases or even video planning, but some people are just more magnetic than others.

It's a somewhat uncomfortable truth but some kids are more... endearing than others? That is to say, there are some channels with kids that other kids would quickly bore with.

>>> Which is more of a commodity, a specific child that other kids would enjoy watching play, or someone to edit videos and plan content?

The parents are much more important for the business. They are true sales people, they do a ton of marketing, they optimized the revenues perfectly and they edit the videos accordingly.

I think I get what you are saying, but one is quantifiable and the other is taste. And there are awesome personalities all around me, but without the hard work of planning, editing, etc., it's not worth much.

potential is the easy part

This sort of assumes there were a bunch of peers who all started out even and he was the winner. In reality it's more a case of fortunate timing.

Maybe both are right: Both the kid AND the parents deserve the money.

I didn't mean to suggest anyone did or did not deserve anything. It was a question of who was making or is the product. Clearly they all deserve the benefit from their success.

Not to mention his parents figured out something that I still don't understand but have learned: A title like "100+ cars toys GIANT EGG SURPRISE OPENING Disney Pixar Lightning McQueen kids video Ryan ToysReview" is exactly right to get hits.

Elsagate video generating bot-creators also figured out the same thing. Unfortunately, people think this is smart marketing, I see it being the same as those old SEO tricks people used to do, like putting 20 catch-it-all words in their page title to get search hits. It's just pollution, just like producers making their songs the loudest. I think it just makes it worse for everyone. To me these titles kinds of titles have the exact opposite intended effect, they kinda make me sick actually. Just like this whole article tbh.

For every fad there are a few people who benefit the most I guess.

The question is, how long will it be until YouTube adjusts its search and recommendation algorithms to penalize this type of title spam?

Does good taste exist, and if so, can one detect and measure it?

Well it's been going strong for 10 years, so I don't think the general trend is going away. Same for thumbnails.

Google owns YouTube, and they adjust their search engine algorithms all the time to penalize blatant keyword spam. I don't see why they can't do the same for YouTube, unless they just don't care.

Google has more competition for web search than for YouTube search; they could make the latter better but face no competitive pressure to do so.

There might still be a business case if there's evidence that tbad search results are reducing YouTube stickiness and ad revenue, but that may not be evident in clear data even if it is true.

It's not the kid in the video, it's not his parents. It's the parents of other kids and those kids that make this a surreal phenomenon.

There's a lot of YouTube junk out there that's seductive and, for some groups, infinitely watchable. Sadly that's where the gold is these days.

I have some friends who are parents. They sometimes loan their (very young) kid a tablet to keep him distracted while they're busy. It keeps him from causing problems for himself.

The kid goes to Youtube and only watches vacuum-cleaning videos. For hours.

He also believes every TV is (or should ideally be) touchscreen interactable. He likes boping the people on the news. He thinks they're puppets.

He's a healthy, normal kid. What I'm trying to express is that we don't know how normal kids react to Youtube and its effect on them. It can be surprising.

You can let them watch mundane videos for hours and be all "eh, well" or you can intervene and try and steer their attention towards more productive things. It seems like kids have fewer and fewer toys these days and more and more gadgets. Maybe that's part of the problem.

The looong tail.

There are laws about child performers, their parents, and the money they make. I wonder if they apply here? I'm sure the relevant state regulators have looked into it with this kind of money at stake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Child_Actor%27s_Bil...

But is he "acting" ? He's just playing with toys. Is every YouTuber "acting" ? Where does one draw the boundary between "acting" and just goofing around in front of a camera?

(I'm not arguing, but it is an interesting discussion to have)

By the legal definition, of course he is acting.

What definition is that?

Those laws seem to mostly address the child's power to contract and requirements regarding income under such contracts; this is income the parents made monetizing videos of their child. It's not clear to me that the child has any income here other than parental gifts, or that the laws you reference apply in any way to any income that the child does have.

Sure, but you can say the same about every YouTube channel, and every other enterprise ever. The highlight is that the 6-year-old is the face and "brand" of the operation.

What weird is that my kids are watching these channels and the ads playing on the iPads are Nicorette and car ads. To make things weirder, they use my Google account (I never smoked, nor do I visit any car sites or watch car videos).

Good job Google! Great ad targeting!

Perhaps Google predicts your kids' future desires. Watching super-consumerist videos is an indication of addictive personality?

I am hoping kids' parents are tax sheltering some of this money.

Child labor laws seem to be relevant here.

"6 year old's parents make $11M posting videos of their child on youtube" doesn't have the same clickbait value, though.

It's kind of sad that this clickbait is already sitting the the top of HN.

That would still be truly remarkable

Right, but "<incredibly young child> does <thing child didn't actually do>" is a tried and tested clickbait method that seems to work every time. That's what they were going for.

OK but so what? Every 2nd news headline is clickbait these days, it's not insightful to point out the obvious in individual cases.

I so completely don't understand the mindless things people watch on YouTube. My kid loves watching videos of people providing excited (cartoon-like) commentary over some third party playing a video game.

It is like getting high on the suspense of something that is going to happen, but there is never a disappointment because its so stupid and mindless it doesn't matter if that thing never actually happens. Personally, it just seems like mindless crap to me, and yet people get absolutely fixated on it.

So, a bit like watching sports? :)

Somewhat, I guess. Sports are generally exciting when live though. None of this stuff making money on YouTube is live. I don't really watch sports either, unless I am attending a sporting event in person.

I think you're heavily projecting your own value system onto the content.

The reality is that for people who enjoy that content, it is exciting, and they really do enjoy watching other people play the game and talk about it.

I think it's a simple low pressure way to engage with something. As a kid I used to watch my older brother play SNES, and I think this in a way kinda follows that. You get to tag along for the journey without the fear of failure. I do worry that the ability to just absorb others' social interactions/experiments/failures will lead to less risk-taking kids, but there's probably an element of it that we as adults can't grasp without the same amount of free time that kids have.

It's interesting - I recently taught year six kids computer programming as part of an outreach program though where I work, and all of the kids wanted to know two things: if I could hack things, and most importantly, what my twitch name was and if I streamed. They all watched things together - it was a social hangout for them. Really interesting dynamic.

They wanted a stream of what, you coding? Maybe teaching? Maybe twitch is not a bad platform to teach..

I'm generally pro-giving kids technology. My five year old has figured out how to text me respond to my texts using Siri, so we got her an iPhone. These toy-opening videos, however, are manipulative and without social value. (I think marketing directed at children and teenagers is categorically without social value, but that's a fight we lost long ago.)

I don't want to start blocking content, but I'm curious whether there is any way to purchase an advertising-free experience on Youtube that would deprioritize such videos. Curating rather than censorship, I guess.

Do you restrict usage per time? Like, no more than 1 hour a day?

Do you find that she wants to use the phone ALL the time? Does she take it to school? (one more question: are you the guy who sends his kiddo to montessori school?)

She doesn't take it to school. She's high-energy so usually she wants to play outside or play make-believe, so we haven't had problems with it crowding out other activities, though we keep an eye on it. She used to go to Montessori school. Her new school has a more traditional curriculum, though it still emphasizes self-directed learning. (Unlike myself as a kid, she actually wants to learn and do worksheets and whatnot.)

I wonder how much of that money comes from YouTube and how much comes from the toy companies.

Why are videos / channels clearly target at children allowed to be monetized and show advertisements?

Further, why would any parents allow their children to watch them?

> Further, why would any parents allow their children to watch them?

Do you have children?

This is one of those things where when you're talking about it or thinking about it, it's common sense. Of course you're not going to let them watch TV! Or Youtube!

But then when you have a kid who is _just_ not stopping to cry, and you happen to be working from home this one day, and can't afford a babysitter or daycare, and you're tired and terribly sleep-deprived, you ... just resign to it, you give them your smartphone and off they merrily go and you're a little bit of a headache free, for now.

Or you realize that the theory isn't that important after encountering families who don't let their children watch TV and observing bad behavior. And encountering families who allow outrageous TV watching and noticing good behavior.

Anecdotes are not data.

There's not any data either: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/screen-time-for-kids-is....

Parenting is not a data driven activity. It's an art because children are people not statistics.

I have four kids and outright banned YouTube in our house after that elsagate article in the nyt. I just don't have the time or desire to monitor what YouTube decides to show them.

With Netflix I have a much better idea of what they're seeing. Plus they will watch an entire show with a beginning mine middle and end on Netflix.

When they asked why no more YouTube I told them I didn't want them seeing ads and that Netflix is enough.

I guess that's a long way of saying that it's possible to hand your kid a smart phone to get them out of your hair without involving YouTube.

I can't tell if this is an intentional strawman but you are in no way addressing the question.

There is literally millions of hours of high quality content to distract children that is not commercial. In fact, young children will happily watch the same thing over and over again.

So why allow them to watch low quality commercial content?

Personally, I literally don't know of a single kid that's allowed to watch YouTube. Trust me, they don't run out of things to watch without it.

I think the GP was asking about letting kids watch ad-sponsored youtube channels.

Lots of parents end up having that time to use screen time as a crutch.

I just avoid the most egregious sources, like youtube.

Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and my personal collection of Disney & Pixar films, all have enough kids content that if I need that extra help, I can go towards.

My mother solved the TV problem easily: don't have a TV in the house. Of course cellphones are now TVs, so that's a bit harder. But -- and I know I'll get down votes for writing this -- you as a parent are supposed to be in control. If I cried over something dumb like this, I'd absolutely be having a painfully intimate moment with a ruler, belt or hand. I say this as a 27 year old: these days parents are afraid to physically discipline their kids, and then wonder what's wrong with their kids.

Consensus among scientists seems to be that physical discipline is less effective.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx

What does hitting your kid when they cry resolve? A kid doesn't get to watch TV. They cry. They still don't get to watch TV. They get used to it and stop crying. Why does hitting need to be involved?

Does your boss hit you when your less productive at work?

I think we have arrived at a significant culture clash.

I believe that whipping children is quite bad and, on its face, substantially worse than allowing children to watch videos of other children happily playing with toys.

Violence begets violence. Using violence teaches kids to be violent, aggressive and anti-social even under the guise of discipline. This is well known in child development. It also doesn't work. Even the worst behaviors can be managed effectively without resorting to violence.

At least where I live you would get cops called on you for spanking your kid. Lots of people are against it and view it as child abuse, so even if you view it as acceptable society will punish you for carrying out the corporal punishment.

Study after study has shown that spanking kids has detrimental effects on behavior later on. The solution you're advocating is the exact same trade-off you're deriding: gaining compliance now for negative consequences later.

I'm advocating nothing, as I don't really have a personal opinion on soanking. OP implied that people didn't spank their kids out of ignorance. I was just pointing out that there are forces preventing people from spanking their kids, even if they want to do so

> If I cried over something dumb like this, I'd absolutely be having a painfully intimate moment with a ruler, belt or hand

Children, especially very young children, cry over dumb things; it's normal and expected and beating them for it is both cruel and (as mountains of evidence have shown) counterproductive developmentally.

That's not to say parents should give in to tantrums, they should not. But there is a vast space between giving in to tantrums and beating children for them, and it's somewhere in that space that good parenting lies.

Yeah I had parents that thought way. Eventually I had enough of it and gave it right back to them. Think about that before you start a family.

This is absolutely right, but we live in a neutered society. Parents are absolutely worried about having the cops called on them if they strike their children, even in a an appropriate disciplinary manner. Also we've had years of experts telling us not to discipline our children. Result, unruly children who become unruly adults.

So if I don't "strike" my children, I'm not disciplining them? My kids would beg to differ. They are incredibly well-behaved, and I have never physically hurt them as punishment.

You can discipline without resorting to violence. People do it everyday in school, workplace, and all manners of life. I'm not sure why violent discipline is ok when it comes to children.

I'm not up to date on the research on corporal punishment, but isn't the obvious distinction that adults can respond to rational incentives, and children cannot?

Scientists seem to take a strong stand against corporal punishment, but I do have to say, as an Asian dude I know _lots_ of Asian people (well really everyone from Asia) who are brilliant (engineers, surgeons, businessmen) and seem mentally fine and well and they were disciplined physically both at home and school.

My pet theory is that since in school environments physical punishment was distributed "equally", that's not as bad.

I really wonder how far back corporal punishment dates in the west, and whether brilliant people like Einstein ever received physical punishment.

How is that obvious? I have two kids that respond quite well to rational incentives. On the other hand some adults I know respond to irrational incentives all the time.

http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx

That is a difference (well past the teens, even, to an extent), and even without the piles of research on the harmful effects of corporal punishment on children, it should be immediately obvious from that difference why corporal punishment of children (whose entire theory is demonstrating an unacceptably high cost of the course of action) makes less, not more, sense than corporal punishment of adults.

Children are absolutely rational when you present the incentives appropriately.

I once saw a mother in a grocery store with her two little ones in the cart. The older child smacked the smaller one. The mother quickly smacked the older child and said emphatically "We! Don't! Hit!"

It doesn't take a scientific study to realize that teaching children not to be violent by punishing them with violence is confusing. Especially to a small child.

She was just too tired to be logical.

And what makes you think that the generation of “spanked” kids grew up as a well behaving individuals? As far as I see there is less violence nowadays compared to times before

Violent crime is down from the 1990's, but still double what it was in the 1950's: http://www.newgeography.com/content/003799-crime-down-urban-....

Your cite starts in the 60s not the 50s and it is for total crime rather than violent crime. Violent crime is about the same now as it was in the 60s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Is there any real difference between this and targeting children with advertisements on good old fashioned TV?

It probably isn't, but isn't that awful, too? One thing I have noticed over the last ten years is how much quieter it is in my home than my parents' house when I was growing up. Not people, but advertising. I actively notice (and reject) advertisements when I'm exposed to them today because I've largely built my habits around things that are not trying to sell things to me.

Bathing children in constant upsells and advertising seems like a really bad idea to me.

Here in Norway, advertising towards children is actually banned (at least for TV). Some channels get around this by broadcasting from other countries (ironically the ones that show the most cartoons), but at least there was a conscious effort made at one point.

> It probably isn't, but isn't that awful, too?

Sure, but it's something we've been doing for decades. And I can't really blame parents for keeping kids occupied the easy way for a few hours at a time.

Being something we've been doing for decades is no reason to continue, though.

I'm not blaming parents. This is a collective problem. We killed Joe Camel; we can kill other ads designed to mess with kids' brains, too.

It depends on what you mean by "old fashioned TV." Until the 1990's advertising for products for children primarily was structured around the "Gatekeeper Model." The advertisement was focused on selling the product to both the child and their parents. In A Christmas Story Ralphie is asking adults for the Red Ryder. He even pens an essay to provide a reasoned case. He grudgingly lives with "You'll put your eye out, kid" as having legitimacy.

In the 1990's advertisers started marketing directly to children in a different way. Recommend, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture

https://www.amazon.com/Born-Buy-Commercialized-Consumer-Cult...

There are some pretty strict rules about advertising to kids and this is one way to fly under that radar. It is also why these people make as much money as they are.

There are limits to how much you can advertise to children on TV nowadays. It's one of the reasons Saturday morning cartoons died.

I didn't know Saturday morning cartoons had died. But surely the huge volume of content on Netflix et al played a role?

Which is outlawed in some countries (e.g. Sweden)

In my region, commercials were shown for evening shows/sitcoms. I forgot the name but pens and jrking were mentioned as part of the teaser. This happened more than once. So, I don't think they realise...

I do not allow anymore, as this is seen as a spoiled kid with too many toys/attention in our house. We rather focus on having toys that last, like Lego. The way this is portrayed is subliminal as the kids are unaware of it being sponsored. The real show or review element is hardly there.

Although, some stuff I easily allow, like coilbook, super simple songs or race grooves or some stop motion videos...

Kids cartoon TV shows are essentially longform mechandising gambits, with kid-oriented advertisements on top, so it wouldn't be entirely out of bounds.

Not much different from cartoons/channels targeted at children on television IMO.

I haven't been able to read the article due to the paywall.

This is about incentive. You buy toys and books for kids and they are monetized, aren't they?

My friend and I work on a "life hacks" YT channel together because we can take our minds off of work on the weekend as we be creative with new hacks and editing videos. We don't think we will generate revenue, but we do hope one day we will because props do cost money.

We have a friend who's a full time mother. Like us, She started a YT channel to share with people how to make new toys as an interest. It took one video to go viral and now she has over 50K subscribers and she makes decent income.

I knew it had to be Ryan. We live in China and I put youtube kids along with a vpn on my ipad. I don't feel so bad letting my kids watch it more than I would if we were living in USA, due to the English exposure. Anyhow, within a few weeks and my five-year old hit on his channel. Now she asks to watch him by name and pretty much want's to start out there every time.

Same here, in China even, but we moved on (disallowed) it, as we saw bad behaviour developing from Ryan's acts. Especially related to wasting things.BTW, the English spoken by the father and Ryan are very unclear and mostly mumbled. My wife is a teacher of English, and she disliked it for this additional reason.

All I see is child labor. The reason they make so much money is because they are able to skirt legal limits on advertising to children.

I have a bad feeling about exposing a young child to internet fame.

I think that feeling is well founded - child stars almost never turn out well.

Why? What's different than normal fame where you can still be talked about on the Internet?

Simply that internet fame is relatively new, and the effects on young children aren't well understood.

Can't stand this kid. My son watches it, but we forbid it... I rather want him to watch Axel (although not anymore as the parents talk too much and nonsense according to him). Ryan is doing wasteful stuff, especially with food and candy. I really rather see my kid enjoy Tom & Jerry.

It's all downhill from 1st grade. Poor kid already reached his professional peak.

The parents made money, they set up the bank account under their name for YouTube to pay to. Why would they set it up under the 4 yr old child’s name at the beginning

Can someone please provide a non-paywall version? I remember there is a site for this...

https://outline.com/W9FDsZ

Thank you. I will bookmark this site. But can the mods consider automatically rewrite the url to outline please?

The WP paywall is a soft paywall, which is a pretty reasonable way for journalism to be aligned with the interests of the readers.

Learn to use incognito mode, or pay.

So now I have to pay for every news site that have interesting articles coming my way? I'd be paying 5-6 news sites. I pay for my national geography and ACM magazines because I read every issue, but not always newspaper. If I were to verify a news I'd check multiple sources, and now I have to pay every news sites when my limit is up?

Don't be harsh. From now on when I see a paywall version, I will use outline here.

>So now I have to pay for every news site that have interesting articles coming my way?

Those interesting articles cost money to produce. So yes, paying for them is very reasonable.

Pay for it or forego it. Don't steal.

If it's posted on HN it should be available to read.

The article never offers a proof of the claim that the child earned "$11M in one year". Did I miss something? I don't consider Forbes a reputable source.

Source is right there in the article, linked where the claim is made.

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