What will happen to all the you tubers?!

[britneyisfreebutnotokay]

I’m fully aware that I’ve been unreasonable for letting my child watch YouTube at all. I only heard about the ban today, so I’ve deleted it from our TV and the next time she asks, I’ll just have to explain that she can’t watch it anymore.

But it has made me think about all those families who do the fake “perfect life” shows online. I know the children often look like they’re having fun, but surely there has to be a level of exploitation involved. It can’t b easy to have your childhood turned into content.

And now I’m wondering what happens to those families if this really does cut off their income.

People will continue to be able to create content for YouTube. What will not be possible going forward is people aged 13-16 (13 being the legal UK age for a YouTube account) will no longer be able to access the site. YouTube Kids will remain.

You can go on and remove access to certain videos you don’t like and leave the educational stuff. There’s tonnes of interesting stuff about space, physics and nature etc.

This is an abolsute load of bollocks.

Youtube who heavily monitor their content are going to be affected by this, whereas Whatsapp where bullying is known to be rife is able to carry on as normal.

Am I missing something?

Well given that the influencer and online content industry has evolved over the years in various ways (some of this driven by advertising law etc) and that Australia's social media ban was highly publicised and discussions on Internet safety and bans and stricter rules on for example, child YouTube stars, advertising etc, have been ongoing for years, and sometimes platforms themselves drop out of access (the brief tiktok ban in the US) for example i would expect that influencers would have done some thinking about how to future proof their careers, or backup careers etc. Much like anyone in print journalism had to do, or anyone in traditional farming, or any other industry that has changed beyond recognition.

Exactly. There are Youtubers with literally millions of followers. That's people who actively watch them rather than just tuning into a quiz show and not really caring who the presenter is. Plenty of Youtubers are much more famous than the sort of people Mumsnetters would think of as celebrities. Just look up Kane Parsons who learned his trade on Youtube and whose film Backrooms has made over $250,000,000. He had his 21st birthday last week...

You’r confusing two separate issues though.

the first is the social media ban, and the fact that children under 16 won’t be able to go on there.

But that’s separate from these families who exploit their children in the name of content. Personally I think it should be illegal for parents to upload any image of their children to public social media. I’ve seen these YouTubers and tiktokers who have threads dedicated to them raising their severely disabled children etc and frankly while I understand that they might want to be doing it for awareness, although the sobbing on live social media is a bit much, those children aren’t able to consent to being on there, neither are the kids of the influencers.

Although IMO the content earner bubble is about to burst, look on any social media platform now and it’s 90% AI generated. Not an ounce of talent anywhere.

Slightly off topic but we had a ‘what do you want to be when you grow up session’ with our year 2’s, made me so sad when several answered influencers and YouTubers 😭

I worry that YouTube will put a stop to this as it will detect a duplicate account won't it? If it's in your real name with real ID then how would that work?

I agree that youtube shouldn't be banned, my kids have learned so much stuff from educational videos on there and mainstream TV is just boring garbage.

Is it sad though? Or is it like kids wanting to be actors or models when we were younger? Isn’t it just kids want jobs that seem fun where you earn good money rather than a dull 9-5?

DD and DS have supervised time on youtube.

I fail to see how anything they watch is any more damaging than televison.

DD is obsessed with the 'Why Files' and it inspires a lot of her creative writing. DS loves someone who shows how to care for a variety of different wildlife, exotic pets and a man called Tim who grows vegetables (DS is obsessed, every seed from fruit or sprouting garlic bulb/potato has been planted out in his 'patch', and now I'm going to have to get him a bloody heated greenhouse for Christmas).

I won't be stopping them from using my account to watch their shows on the tv.

If you son is over 18 then good for him. If he's still a child then I would argue you are exploiting him and it'sngood that the law is changing

Why would she be exploiting him if he keeps the money himself (I presume he does) and he enjoys and wants to do it
my teen daughter has a channel and she loves making content, it’s her dream to be a film editor when she grows up and making these videos helps her improve her skills, she gets money from YouTube and sponsor deals and then saves it away for when she is older.
I don’t see any issue with that and I’m definitely not exploiting her, we have set rules which she is sticking to.

My oldest makes money on twitch it’s his money, he earnt it.

Nothing to do with me zero exploitation going on here. In fact sometimes it’s bloody annoying being shushed near his door 😅

But with lack of “real” job opportunities for lots of older teens I can’t blame them for cashing in online.

Yes more than likely.

I’ve already deleted it. Such a relief not to have to sit through that crap to make sure it isn’t dodgy. DC fuming and complaining about Kier Starmer. I’m seeing it as a win that my six year old is now super interested in politics and who is making the decisions.

True I did.

I just read Yesteryear so I’ve been thinking about You Tube families

The change will begin happening long before then as platforms implement the necessary changes. They're not going to wait until the last minute to do it. Some platforms have already done so, for example Roblox, Reddit and Discord.

@GentleSheepthey’ve banned under 16s?

I’m assuming as well as the people who find a way around it there will be lots like me who implement it at home immediately. I can’t see any point waiting. Even if it doesn’t come into force I’ll still not bring it back. We’re only affected by the you tube element

Uhhhh no, the US is affected as well, YT already has AI checks for being over 18. Quite a few US states are going to legislate for mandating age verification or parental consent, not only for YT but all social media.

Oh I hadn’t heard about the us doing it as well. Fair enough.

Eh? Why do you need the government to make that decision for you? I agree with not allowing under 16s to have social media accounts and making it law, but why couldn’t you just implement that on your own?

As for YouTube, my child will absolutely still be watching it on my account (the law isn’t to stop that from happening). We don’t allow personal iPads etc but we cast YouTube to our projector and he likes to watch all sorts of interesting things with us.

YouTube isn’t the problem- giving children unrestricted access to doomscroll and go wandering down god knows what dark corners of the internet on their own personal device is the problem.

I don’t understand why you’re seeing this as some kind relief that you can now finally tell your child he can’t watch YouTube and it’s Keir Starmer’s fault 🙄

@UniquePinkSwan hello UPS have you got a link to your son's
YT Channel please 🙂

Is that £3000 before or after tax?