YouTube's popularity among children has alarmed experts (profile image)
Reference News Network reported on October 16 that some of the world's leading children's television producers warned that the visual equivalent of "pizza and candy" in the "Digital Wild West" is drowning children.
According to Agence France-Presse on October 14, the producers said that as YouTube replaces Disney as the favorite brand for American children, and the streaming giant encourages "brush drama", an entire generation may grow up eating cultural junk food.
At a meeting at Cannes on the French Coast over the weekend, executives learned that public service broadcasters such as the BBC and the American Public Broadcasting Agency (PBS) were the last bastions of "watching over children and parents" in an era of increasing dominance by internet giants and toy and game makers.
At the children's show at the Cannes Television Festival, the world's largest children's entertainment market, more than one speaker warned that children could be physically and mentally impaired by exposure to inappropriate content and "algorithms to maximize profits."
The debate came against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump's threat to cut the public broadcaster's budget, despite studies showing that 80 percent of children still watched television primarily, and the French government forced Television Four, which specializes in children's programming, to go online despite the controversy.
Alice Webb, head of children's channels and online content at the BBC, said YouTube's "astonishing popularity among children has sparked a big debate about screen time and the safety and appropriateness of various platforms, and this debate has only just begun".
She declared that YouTube is "not suitable for people under the age of 13."
In 2017, Webb said that because many children are actually "in front of the screen," the technology and entertainment industries should take a hard look at their impact on young minds.
"We have to have this conversation now because we don't want to ask ourselves in 10 years' 'What have we done to our children?' ”
Luca Milano of the Italian radio and television children's channel said public service broadcasters are key when it comes to staying on the defensive to protect children and ensure that they are not used.
"Without them, kids don't have access to things like original content or insightful educational content," he said. Milano mentions the Italian radio and television station's pioneering latest tv series, Jam, and the cartoon Andra and Tati, the first children's drama on the topic of sexual harassment, and the cartoon "Andra and Tati," which tells the story of the sisters surviving Auschwitz.
Tippene Dragner of France's TV Four said the public broadcaster was battling a lot of commercial garbage. "If you want your kids to enjoy eating vegetables, it's hard to do with pizza and candy all around them," she says.
Jackie Edwards, head of BBC Children's Animation, said it was more important than ever to have a "safe space for healthy content" in an environment that "felt like a digital wild West". In addition to establishing quality standards, public broadcasters should "offer something that can compete with the digital world." "So our responsibility is to maintain breadth, space, possibility and ingenuity."