Are children being targeted with disturbing and damaging, age inappropriate content on YouTube? Those who spend a lot of time on YouTube are likely already familiar with the “Spiderman and Elsa” phenomenon: It’s a multi-billion dollar market.
There are tens of thousands of these videos on YouTube, usually where the plot involves the characters playing out some childish scene with some upbeat music in the background. And, what might seem like a painfully simple storyline gets tens- if not hundreds of millions of views- per video.
And I, for one, never thought much of it until I saw the hashtag #ElsaGate making the rounds on Twitter claiming that many of these videos made for and watched by children are riddled with adult content.
Upon further research, it’s true:
Whole channels watched almost exclusively by children are simply masquerading as children’s channels— with videos that begin as something benign and innocent but suddenly insert more disturbing and markedly sexual content as the videos play on.
One of the most consistent adult themes in the Spiderman and Elsavideos was, oddly enough, abortion; here time and time again, characters would present as pregnant and then receive an injection in their stomach making the baby bump disappear.
Other age-inappropriate (and flat-out weird) content that manifests time and time again in these kids videos includes sexualized content like dry-humping and thongs, people eating feces and really graphic imagery like severed limbs and decapitations– all of which seems to be glorified and accompanied by playful joy.
What’s doubly sick is that a lot of these videos, besides being made for children, include children in the casting.
If you have youngsters at home who watch YouTube videos unsupervised, well, you might just want to comb some of the channels they subscribe to and ensure it’s not pushing this degenerate and age-inappropriate agenda.
And, if you see it, report it.
While I’m all for free speech, especially on YouTube, what I can’t figure out is why the powers that be have become fixated on demonetizing and penalizing right wing commentators and gamers like Pewdiepie, while allowing others to seemingly groom our children with this smut— while making a profit in the process.
Perhaps it’s time YouTube stop picking on right wingers making political content for adults and start paying a little more attention to a real scandal; the massive extent of which is still unknown.
By Faith Goldy