YouTube Viewing and Content Quality in Toddlers

TL;DR

Many toddlers watch YouTube, which often has low-quality content, and factors like family income and childcare affect the quality of videos viewed.

Contribution

This study identifies demographic and socioeconomic predictors of YouTube viewing and content quality in toddlers.

Findings

71.5% of toddlers watched YouTube or YouTube Kids, with content often featuring attention-grabbing elements but lacking educational value.

Higher income and lack of childcare were linked to higher-quality YouTube content viewing.

Child executive functioning scores were not associated with the content of YouTube videos viewed.

Abstract

YouTube is the most popular video‐sharing platform for young children and is largely characterized by low content quality. This study examined associations between YouTube viewing in toddlers, family demographics, child executive functioning (EF) and YouTube content quality. Participants include 361 largely white/non‐Hispanic (72%) parents and their 24‐to 26‐month‐olds (50% female) in a community‐based cohort study; data from the baseline wave is used in this analysis. Parents completed surveys and children completed three EF tasks (Snack Delay, Shape Stroop, Reverse Categorization task). Parents reported whether their child watched YouTube or YouTube Kids, and links to the last 10 videos viewed were collected. A total of 1032 videos were coded for 6 different features, and a total quality score was calculated for each video. YouTube viewing was very common: 258 (71.5%) toddlers watched YouTube or YouTube Kids versus 103 (28.5%) toddlers who never watched YouTube. YouTube viewing was associated with parent minoritized race/ethnicity, unemployment, single parenting, and higher child daily screen time. Videos had high levels of attention‐capturing “bedazzling” features (39.1%) and vicarious pleasure (48.6%), but fewer had high levels of educational content (16.7%) or positive role modeling (15.4%). Child EF scores were not associated with the content of YouTube videos viewed. Predictors of higher‐quality YouTube content viewing included higher income and children not attending childcare. These results have implications for both YouTube platform design and parent decision‐making about content.