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Comment by zanek | Hacker News Reader

My 7 year old son watches Dude Perfect on YouTube, which I had never heard of. Apparently its all the rage, in elementary schools and he heard about it via other kids.

I watched a few to make sure they were ok, but they mostly came off as older guys doing elaborate stunts that kids would do on a much smaller scale (like throwing balls off tall buildings, fat suits on cars, etc )

I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so. One of the episodes showcased their new Dude Perfect headquarters that looked like a block long warehouse with basketball courts, foam pits , etc in it with their DP logo all over it.

I guess it pays to cater to kids base desires on a grander scale

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> I'm not shocked they are making $20M or so.

I'm slightly shocked that the money comes from advertisers interested in influencing 6-7 year old kids.

Then again, thinking about the kids' tv shows that only really existed to sell the toys (eg, Transformers) it's not that surprising.

Not surprising, but I find the practice disturbing. I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees, and much of the marketing to children likely occurs in this unwanted but hard to avoid space. The end result is corporations trying to train children that the best way to live and enjoy one's self is if they buy a steady stream plastic goods made overseas, eventually to be discarded in landfills.

One could imagine a world where advertising to children is no longer considered appropriate, with the understanding that the young minds of the world should not be manipulated by corporate interests.

Or those who want that kind of environment need to find a new way to fund media.

> I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees

I hear things like this a lot. It's not hard, it just takes time. Is it hard to make that time? If it is too hard to make time to do something with your kids that you yourself think is important, you have to reconsider your priorities.

If you didn't plan appropriately, and decided to have kids before realizing the effort required, then you need to do some risk-reward analysis and determine which things you "have time" to pay attention to and which you don't.

> unwanted but hard to avoid space

Again, not hard, just time consuming. Time and interest will make sure your kids are well adjusted (well, at least as well adjusted as their parents).

My issue with this (I don’t have kids) is that the people with the least time are the poor. They’re chronically busy, and so taking the time to keep your kids off of this stuff is a privilege not everyone can enjoy.

Not providing access to YouTube is pretty low effort. Providing supervised access is harder, sure.

>a steady stream plastic goods made overseas, eventually to be discarded in landfills.

I don't know what ads your kids are getting but with the possible exception of the "Wish App" ads (which I fervently wish would die a fiery death at the very heart of the sun), most of the ads pitched to my kids are hawking digital ephemera of some sort or another.

"I imagine it's hard for busy parents to police the commercials the children sees"

I'm less worried about the commercials (we pay for YT Premium so there's none of those) but more in YouTube's suggestion algorithm. I worry about one of my kids getting lost down one of those toxic rabbit holes.

If your kid is hooked to youtube, you have a bit more control than than a parent in the 90s whose kid was hooked to cartoons. Today you could opt out of all advertisements by paying Youtube or installing an ad blocker. That said, I'm not sure you can block channels that are entirely ads, like unboxing channels.

Yes, you can block channels! It is oh so satisfying!

But do they even play with toys with all the time spent on youtube ?

Right? Let's see...

- GI Joe

- Transformers

- He-Man

- She-Ra

- Might Max

- Power Rangers

- Bionicle

- Ninjago

- Care Bears

- Street Sharks

- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Those are just off the top of my head. TV shows (and in some instances movies) that existed to sell toys.

Bah, all that pales comparison to Paw Patrol ip. They're the kings of selling shit towards kids. There was an article a month (WSJ or NYT) or so back that they crossed $1 billion for revenue this fiscal year. That and like Peppa Pig is somewhere around the $300mil marker. Think of this, Paw Patrol can walk up to the Cowboys NFL team (normally the highest grossing team from what I can find) and say "You're poor." And get away with it.

But I mean, hell, the Paw Patrol folks apparently don't say no to any licensing idea. Last weekend my buddy picked up Paw Patrol gardening gloves for his kid. Seriously... who would say "Yes, it makes perfect sense to put a children's tv character on gardening gloves and sell them in Lowes, next to all the actual, real gloves." And it worked.

Edit: grammar goof fix

I had never heard of Paw Patrol until I got some Paw Patrol snack size ziplock bags at my local Dollar General because they were cheap.

So cheap that they busted open when I was using them for dying plastic beads with alcohol ink. Beads and ink went flying all over my apartment. I bought them specifically for dying beads btw.

I've resented Paw Patrol ever since.

As someone with a six year old daughter who loves YouTube. I worry about this too. I can't really explain why I am worried, maybe I am just being a parent. I just hope in future sometime my daughter doesn't have some altered version of reality gleaned from commercials on YouTube.

I worry that my 2 year old daughter will develop these addictions. My hope is that in modeling good behavior (kids are always watching! They learn more watching our behavior than we can ever try to teach them!) she will not.

Now my fear is just that my behavior is not good enough.

Advertisers are always looking at ways to skirt the rules in non-obvious ways. There are a lot of laws around advertising to kids including total bans in some regions. Ways to legally side-step those rules are pretty rare and when one is found - until the loophole is closed - you can be sure of a lot of business going that way.

What do you think is more effective: an ad saying my child will like this toy or my child asking me for that toy? I think it all boils down to that, basically.

Their stunts are impressive. Always was surprised by their religious tones though http://dudeperfect.com/about/

That is surprising. I never once got the impression they were trying to do something much bigger than themselves; pretty low key on their mission there.

Which isn't too bad because it's basically a tv show at that point. They have multiple hosts, cameramen, sets, etc. There's probably quite a few people working on those shows and they probably burn through that 20m pretty quick.

My six year old has started running around the house without his shirt, lifting things and drinking milk so that he can be all swole. That or he watches chrisfix videos on how to repair the car.

I highly recommend the chrisfix videos, btw. We've both learned a lot about cars.

I've been gently reminding my son that Dude Perfect is pure entertainment and he is barely learning anything with it. He's slowly been drifting away from it.

Thankfully, he watches kurzgesagt, BackYard Scientist, VSauce, TED and mostly scientific or programming videos so its mostly 5 to 1 , educational to entertainment videos with the limited screen time he has.

The Khan Academy courses are really good as well as the ProdigyGame (for math) for keeping him engaged and multiple grades ahead of his current grade.

https://www.prodigygame.com/

Introduce your kid to Andrew Camarata https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUujfNBK9uv3cIW-P5PX7vA/vid...

Clean language, strong work ethics. Works with heavy equipment, builds a Castle out of Shipping Containers, fixes trucks/boats/bikes/excavators etc.

Mustie1 is another clean educational YTber with similar content: https://www.youtube.com/user/mustie1/videos

> My six year old has started running around the house without his shirt, lifting things and drinking milk so that he can be all swole.

To be fair I do this and I'm 34. ;)

Although you should tell him that running is the worst thing for gainz.

The only reason it works is because these youtubers know that the largest demographic on YT is 8-22 year olds who are immature. On the flip side, the advertisers think they're advertising to adults with disposable income....thus it because a huge waste of ad spend for the advertisers but they haven't realized that yet. All they know is TV viewership is decreasing and online media is rising...so they need to do something to push their products.

Well they are advertising to people with disposable income, by proxy: the parents of the kids who watch the videos then beg/nag their parents for things from the adverts.

Yup, it's even called "the nag factor".

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110815121519.h...

A significant portion of this list is dominated by people who scream all the time because kids love it. Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, et al.

Do you use an adblocker for his viewing?

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