About this session

Friday, 1:20 PM - 2:50 PM

All Joy, No Learning? What Young Children Watch on YouTube, Why, and What It Means

This symposium explores YouTube videos as a context for children’s early learning and development. Children watch more videos online than anywhere else (Rideout & Robb, 2020), and YouTube is the most popular video-sharing platform among young children (Radesky et al., 2022; Common Sense Census, 2020). To better understand how YouTube may affect young children, it is important to understand why children watch YouTube videos, what they watch, and what they may miss.

Together, these papers reveal key themes in children’s YouTube viewing, including the primacy of joy and pleasure-seeking, and real but limited learning opportunities. We begin with a paper on the social and emotional gratifications children derive from watching YouTube, as reported by their parents, which include joy, peer bonding, and exploring niche interests. We then present a content analysis of YouTube videos watched by toddlers, which reveals predominant negative role modeling, vicarious pleasure, and low educational content (with high ad load). A third paper describes instructional strategies in YouTube videos about the alphabet, finding that videos use a variety of recommended strategies (e.g., defining letter names, repetition), but also include inaccuracies and missed learning opportunities. Our final paper develops a machine learning model to detect educational content in YouTube videos for young children, estimating that 16% of the videos preschoolers watch include mathematics or literacy content. Presenters will discuss implications for caregivers, educators, and technology developers who wish to support young children’s healthy development in the age of YouTube.

Paper #1
Title	You Do You[Tube]! The Multifaceted Roles of Online Video Viewing in the Lives of U.S. Children
Presenting author	J. Alex Bonus, School of Communication, The Ohio State University, United States of America

Paper #2
Title	What are toddlers watching on YouTube?
Presenting author	Madalynn Woods, University of Michigan, United States of America

Paper #3
Title	A Content Analysis of Educational Alphabet Videos on YouTube
Presenting author	Somin Park, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Paper #4
Title	Developing AI to Classify Educational Content on YouTube
Presenting author	Dr. Claire Christensen, Ph.D., SRI Education, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Dr. Claire Christensen, Ph.D., SRI Education, United States

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