YouTube Families

[IdaBWells]

As someone who enjoys wasting time on YouTube I have stumbled across a couple of families that I like to watch. One is the “Curly Coopers” a young mixed-race married couple in the American South with three adorable kids. They are relatively low-key with less than 100k subscribers I believe.

I think it’s because of them that YouTube suggested to me another young bi-racial married couple in SE London “The Grimwades” who homeschool their five children. I started following them a couple of weeks ago and in that time they have exploded from 25k to almost 100k subscribers. They are practicing Christians and as my Christian faith is important to me I really enjoy their family values. They are just great parents and again their children are so enjoyable to watch. They put me in a good state of mind after watching them as they are generally upbeat and cheerful.

However, as much as I am personally addicted to them I do wonder about putting your whole family life out as entertainment. The British family Vlog about 3 times a week and even their 3 and 4 year olds constantly address the camera talking to the subscribers. We know all about this family, the children’s real names and lots of information about the parents and their extended family. I think I feel uncomfortable with the fact that their real life is being consumed as an entertaining product and that the children have no choice that their privacy is being invaded and thousands of strangers know so much about their intimate family interactions.

What do you all think? And are there any families that you watch frequently and why?

Narcissistic, selfish and abusive (emotionally and sometimes physically). I think you can tell I'm not a fan

Blimey Mission I don’t know which families those are, but the ones I am watching are not like that.

Except of course the massive violating your child’s right to privacy!

To be fair, I've only come across one of the unpleasant ones (the one where the parents played horrible pranks on the children and they ended up getting removed from their care). I just find the whole concept vain personally but I understand other people like them so I just don't watch And yes, the massive violation to a child's privacy and I worry about some crazed stalker becoming obsessed with a child and doing something illegal.

That sounds horrific and so exploitative. Yes, showing your absolutely adorable and very young children (the Grimwades 5 children are 8 and under) to the world is extremely unnerving to me. DH definitely thinks it’s ridiculously unsafe.

In the simplest ways, these children have a safe, cosy life where they are being taught to respect adults. It would be so easy for a person with bad intentions to approach these children in public and to address them by their name and talk about so many things that would encourage the child to completely trust them. It is making your children incredibly vulnerable where total stranger have masses of personal information about them.

Insane behaviour, dangerous to the children whose privacy should be respected.

To be honest I am surprised that YouTube allow parents to have their children on like this, it seems ripe for some kind of horror. You only need one disturbed individual ....

It wouldn’t even be hard to find where they lived as they frequently show the outside of their home. I think the parents are very naive.

I watch j house vlogs with my 5 year old. It’s a lovely American homeschooling, Christian family ( though dont talk much about religion) They volunteer, go hiking, and while there’s videos of gift opening on birthdays and the odd sponsored video, it’s mostly just clean family fun. I like watching them with her.

She’s browsed to several other families that are mostly giant adverts for toys and I cannot Stand them. Just cringe! My teen jokes I’m jealous that we aren’t raking it in like them but I don’t even put my kids photos on private fb never mind YouTube!

EdHelp I enjoy these two families for the same reasons. They live modestly, their vlogs are just about simple family times - no promotions or focus on materialism. In fact when the ’Grimwades’ car broke down and they got a replacement they apologized to their subscribers who wanted to know which car they bought. They just didn’t want to focus on that and explained why. Whatever they got was just a modest secondhand family car big enough for them. They just weren’t interested in talking about their car!

I also like that they are young and enjoy being active with their kids, it is just a different picture from what we are usually feed of dysfunctional, unhappy families who don’t enjoy being together.

Unfortunately I am aware of the hypocrisy of me enjoying their vlogs while worrying about their safety.