Kids industry professionals from Australia and beyond are largely aligned in their view that the country’s plan to ban children under the age of 16 from accessing YouTube is a terrible idea and will be bad for kids and businesses alike. 

Most respondents (64.3%) to Kidscreen‘s poll agree that the ban is not a good idea. The main reasons they provide are that YouTube’s benefits—being a digital space where kids can learn and relax—outweigh the negatives.

The platform is very important to kids, says David Kleeman, SVP of global trends at Dubit. Plus kids will probably just find a way around the ban. “YouTube is Kid Google and therefore essential to young people,” he says. “Yes, the platform has plenty of ‘brain rot’ content, but it’s also where kids and teens turn for their hobbies, fandoms and learning needs. There has to be a better solution to harmful algorithms than shutting off the spigot.” 

Some creatives opened up about how YouTube has personally helped their children, and how losing the platform doesn’t just hurt their business prospects, but hits close to home as well. 

“YouTube is an essential part of my young neurodivergent son’s life,” says Luke Escombe, creator The Vegetable Plot, an Australian kids musical group that has two million Spotify streams. “It’s his culture, his creative sandbox, his place to research and develop expertise on the things he cares about—and it’s how he expresses himself. YouTube has been extremely beneficial to his mental health, and I’m appalled that the government has reversed their position on including it in the ban.” 

But not everyone thinks the ban is a terrible notion. YouTube’s harmful content, lack of vetting and concern about what the platform can do to kids’ brains are all reasons why the ban is a good step, says Filipe Mendes Ribeiro, product manager at Portuguese telecom company NOS.

“YouTube started as a great idea, but over the last 10 years it became a place where trash content is pushed by algorithms with the only goal of keeping users on the platform and consuming ads,” he said. “This is severely affecting kids’ brains and healthy development.” 

It’s important to note that YouTube’s children’s content hub YouTube Kids isn’t included in the ban. The government doesn’t view it as a social media platform because users can’t upload videos there or comment on them. But sparing it isn’t expected to solve anything. More than half of our poll’s respondents (64.3%) agree that just having YouTube Kids is not sufficient for the kids media sector. 

“I imagine the problem is monetization,” says Vince Piotti, an ex-Nickelodeon senior director of media and marketing promotion and strategy. “YouTube Kids doesn’t generate the revenue that YouTube proper does. As a parent, it’s sufficient, but it may not be for the industry.”

“Hardly any children or families use it,” says Jerome Mazandarani bluntly. He’s a media consultant who’s held MD roles at Crunchyroll and Manga Entertainment. “It doesn’t work, and it blocks accessibility to age-appropriate content for the intended audience.” 

Luca Fiore, director of content and programming at producer/distributor CosmoBlue Media, agrees. “It’ll be a huge hit to popular creators who are monetizing well, since it is known that most of their traffic still comes from the mainstream platform.” 

Then there’s the question of whether the ban can actually be implemented successfully. Overwhelmingly, the industry is aligned on an answer: No. Almost everyone surveyed (92.9%) voted that it wouldn’t be successful. 

Respondents worried that kids will still end up watching YouTube using VPNs, and that circumventing the rules will only lead to children avoiding protections altogether.

“In Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum’s character Dr. Ian Malcolm, famously says, ‘Life will find a way,'” notes Kleeman. “From all available evidence, the media equivalent is that ‘youth will find a way’ when they have a need that available offerings don’t meet. They’ll hack a new path.” 

Some creators and business owners voiced their frustration that the ban will target their wallet. But an even greater concern they have is that it threatens to hurt Australian kids who have already had their access to content restricted in recent years. 

“As an Australian kids exec and parent, what concerns me is the government has acted with politics rather than policy on this and with no foresight to what’s actually next,” adds Ben Gage, managing director at comics and trading card publisher Kryptyx Entertainment. “They have already wiped out content quotas for kids to keep the media companies happy AND defunded kids & family content with the public broadcaster. So by banning content quotas, defunding ABC Kids, and banning YouTube, where does the Australian government want kids to go for appropriate content?”

Funnily enough, one respondent to this poll that was clearly intended for the industry was a US elementary school student who summed up concerns about the ban that are probably shared by many kids: “Some people who watch YouTube Kids are tweens, and we are stuck watching baby shows…Kids should have the freedom of what they watch.”

Image courtesy of Tim Gouw via Unsplash.