YouTube Kids Shows Videos Promoting Drug Culture, Firearms To Toddlers: Report

YouTube Kids -- a dedicated app for kids that¡¯s designed to show kids-centric videos were found to promote skin bleaching, weight loss, drug culture and firearms videos to kids as young as two.

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Reported first by The Guardian, this is according to a new investigation that was carried out by Tech Transparency Project -- a US-based non-profit -- on the aforementioned variant of YouTube¡¯s app that was released in 2015.

The researchers used three different accounts -- each set to one of the app¡¯s age groups -- and discovered numerous videos that shouldn¡¯t be even playable on the kid-friendly version of the streaming app.

One of the videos was a Breaking Bad-themed cooking show where the host dressed up in respirators, making a joke about inhaling fumes while recreating the RV in a Minecraft project.

Another alarming content by an Indian beauty influencer could subject kids to toxic body image issues. The video showed how to apply skin-bleaching products that are available for older kids. One video directed at preschoolers was shown a cartoon that encouraged them to burn calories and lose weight, with the statement, ¡°wiggle your jiggle.¡±

Katie Paul, TTP¡¯s director said in a statement, ¡°YouTube Kids is geared specifically to young children, even toddlers. This is a product that, YouTube claims, does a lot of machine learning to filter out harmful content. It¡¯s very specifically meant to be safe for children, and we didn¡¯t expect to find the variety of inappropriate content that we did find.¡±

She added, ¡°The most shocking thing, for me personally, was seeing a lot of the drug-related content,¡± she added. ¡°Of course, these aren¡¯t pushing drugs ¨C but a show like Breaking Bad, which is definitely meant for adults, is being mimicked to push rock candy as though it¡¯s ¡®baked meth¡¯ using a lot of drug phrases.¡±

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In a statement, a YouTube spokesperson responded, ¡°We built YouTube Kids to create a safer environment for kids to explore their interests and curiosity while giving parents the tools to customise the experience for their kids. We have a higher bar for which videos can be a part of the app and also empower parents to control what content their child can and cannot see. Upon review, we have removed or age-gated a number of the flagged videos from the Kids app.¡±

Paul argues that such algorithmically curated content shouldn¡¯t be marked for kids. It is just one of the many examples of the fact that even when a company claims to be trying their hardest towards protecting children from such curated content, harm is still breaching through vulnerable populations.

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