I grew up with a somewhat puritanical(secular) conception of what children’s media should be. I was never the sheltered kid who got flat out banned from watching certain things, but we also never had cable…so I pretty much just watched PBS and Disney VHSes. Anytime I put on Kids WB, my mom would be scandalized by something. “Honey why are the good guys making these beautiful magical creatures fight each other, can’t they all be like the turtles in sunglasses that fight fires?” Or “They dont need to be standing like that to play a card game, why are they thrusting their crotch out so agressively. This is about conflating virility with power isnt it – DONT LET THEM BRAINWASH YOU ROBYN POWER IS NOT INNATELY MASCULINE.”
I try to keep that context in mind when I am wringing my hands about current day kids entertainment. I was raised on the idea “you become what you consume”, in a media sense. It’s not a philosophy everyone shares, and few see it as a big concern. Is this really a new problem? Is it something that needs to be fixed, or am I just assuming my own childhood was “normal” and “good”?
Five Nights at Freddies was the first time as an adult I unironically thought, “Kids are playing this? Like, little kids?” to me it was just a niche indie horror game that did numbers on youtube….writing that out I am now directly connecting the dots in my head of how that trickled down from people like Markiplier to their audience of 8 year olds.
The irony being Markiplier is one of the most well-meaning youtubers in an absolute ocean of cynical content. I don’t think he was even targeting pre-teens as a demo. The problem really comes back to Youtube itself. The biggest youtuber in the world IS a childrens entertainer. He sells chocolate bars and school lunch packs. And yet, he isn’t on the youtube kids app – his videos are for “older kids and teens”, according to someone in his legal department, I’m sure. That kinda sums up the intential congnative dissonance google is cultivating to maximize profit while doing the bare minimum to keep the goverment off their back.
That government piece is where it gets tricky, though. I dont know how much we can expect government regulation to come through any more. I want to believe the pendulum will swing back, but it might not for a long time. It might be on us as consumers, parents, teachers, ect. to regulate with our wallets and with our watchtime. At the very least, let’s bring all these videos out into the family room, and have an honest adult conversation about the impact it’s having. Maybe I’m turning into my mother, but any time my little cousin tells me about how cool Logan Paul is I want to yell DON’T LET THEM BRAINWASH YOU JONATHAN BEING RICH AND POWERFUL IS NOT INNATELY COOL.
>>robyns_ramblings 