YouTube Kids and marketing to children: is it ethical?

YouTube Kids is a free Google app entirely designed for children, since both its contents and its structure – easy to navigate – are kids-friendly. On YouTube Kids, children can find age-appropriate videos, channels and playlists: the app features popular children’s programming, plus content from filmmakers, teachers, and creators all around the world. 

YouTube Kids is a children-oriented app: what is displayed is family-friendly, so parents should feel safe about what their kids are watching on it; moreover, they have the possibility to control what they are searching for and the amount of time they spend on YouTube Kids, in order to limit it. 

YouTube Kids

This initiative has really positive aspects, since it is a good way to entertain kids with shows that are appropriate for their age and sensibility, and – moreover – it is free. On the contrary, an ethical issue has risen about the ads: YouTube Kids displays advertisements that – as some US consumers group wrote to the Federal Trade Commission – blur the line between commercials and programming. As Consumer Affairs reported, the practices under fire are:

• Intermixing advertising and programming in ways that deceive young children, who, unlike adults, lack the cognitive ability to distinguish between the two;

• Featuring numerous “branded channels” for McDonald’s, Barbie, Fisher-Price, and other companies, which are little more than program-length commercials;

• Distributing so-called “user-generated” segments that feature toys, candy, and other products without disclosing the business relationships that many of the producers of these videos have with the manufacturers of the products, a likely violation of the FTC’s Endorsement Guidelines.

Below, we can watch a typical example of “unboxing” video, in which YouTube users film themselves while opening some boxes full of toys. In the video, McDonald’s, Barbie and Star Wars toys are promoted at the same time, even if it definitely does not look like a commercial. 

Sure, adults may recognize the commercial aim of the video, but for children is not that easy. They are not mature and critical enough to understand that the video is just trying to convey their preferences towards a specific brand. That is way some US consumers groups complained to the Federal Trade Commission, accusing YouTube Kids of misleading advertising, because ads are mixed with contents and normal programming. 

The regulations about TV commercials aimed at kids are really strict: in 1990, the Federal Communications Commission issued the Children’s Television Act, which encourages and enforces the presence of programs designed to serve the educational and informational needs of children, limits TV commercials dedicated to them (to 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays), and prohibits program-length commercials, adverts not separated by the program. 

The last point is particularly crucial for the topic we are dealing with, since YouTube Kids commercials often look like programs, the lines between ads and programming are blurred, and that is the reason why customers are protesting. The Federal Communications Commission does not control digital media – that is why consumers demanded the Federal Trade Commission’s intervention, but consumer groups claim that digital media should respect the same norms of television when dealing with marketing to children. Essentially, YouTube Kids is like a TV channel: why shouldn’t it respect the same norms? The FTC complaint, first organized by Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Public Representation, has later been supported by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Center for Digital Democracy, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Children Now, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Consumer Watchdog, and Public Citizen.

Google – when the FTC complaint was filed – defended YouTube Kids, underlining that mature contents are filtered, that the app is totally kids-friendly, that parents have the possibility to monitor what their kids are watching and that, moreover, the presence of ads is vital to keep it free. 

YouTube Kids and children

What do you think about the case? Do you believe that kids should be protected by these kinds of ads, because of their vulnerability and their difficulty in recognizing hidden advertising messages? Or do you share Google’s position, thinking that the commercials displayed by YouTube Kids are not avoidable and that they do not manipulate children, since the contents are kids-friendly?

Carlotta Neuenschwander