Hello,
I am not a parent but I want to bring something to the attention of parents who let their kids use youtube, even if they have a child friendly account or the Youtube Kids app or something like that. It seems like mumsnet is full of responsible parents who wouldnt let their kids use youtube anyway but it would be good to spread the word about this.
In short: there seems to hundreds of channels on youtube that purport to be for children but contain common themes in the thumbnails (preview pictures) and in the video titles of violence, scatology, sex and are generally disturbing. The videos contain recurring patterns and themes that seem to be orientated towards these inappropriate themes. This is all despite the fact that these themes are hidden amongst banal but child friendly content. It has dubbed "Elsagate" by some because the videos use characters from child media like Elsa from Frozen.
This channel:
www.youtube.com/user/toysandfunnykids/videos
looks like an average kids cartoon channel aimed at ages about 2 - 8. Each video has millions of views. However, if you watch some of these videos and look at some of the thumbnails they have some odd recurring themes that are vaguely violent, sexual, scatological or just disturbing. You have to look through the videos (by going onto 'videos' on the channel page and clicking 'load more' at the bottom) because not all of them are of this nature but some of them are. Some of the video titles are "surprise eggs in the toilet" or "spiderbaby plays with scissors".
There seems to be hundreds of these channels with the same recurring themes such as here:
www.youtube.com/user/MaterCarClub/videos
(some video titles: "Real POOP with Pink Spider-Girl Superheroes in Real Life Play Doh Stop Motion Videos", "Drinking from the Toilet! Hasbro Gaming Toilet Trouble DCTC Toy Challenges")
This one is the most disturbing and you only have to click the link to see what I'm talking about. I really don't know what to make of this and I'm not even sure if this is meant for children although it appears to be (warning: there is something about this channel that is extremely disturbing, probably because it contains actual child actors):
www.youtube.com/channel/UC_f6Xzn20v5HhuovNx-ZErg
Whether or not the above channel is intended for children, if you look at the related channels you can see that many of them blatantly are and contain some overt scatological and sexual themes, if you look through the videos, like this one:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCRC9LfqV4-pFNevWw1PfHHA/videos
Here is one of the videos from this channel:
Here are some videos of youtube users who have noticed this phenomenon and who have identified inappropriate common themes,:
Some people exposing this endorse the view that this is some sort of CIA conspiracy, programming the minds of children or something.
Please don't be put off by this language. I don't know what is behind this but, whether it's the CIA or some random people making a lot of money from the advertising, I really think these videos could be warping kids' minds by repeatedly exposing them to negative and harmful concepts.
Sometimes it is hard to know exactly what is wrong with these channels other than being a bit silly and lacking in artistic value but if you dig through them and the videos you can see that there is something not right at all about them. I began to get a headache and feeling queasy after watching these videos and other people have reported similar.
If you do think this is as serious as I'm making it out to be then I encourage you stop your kids using youtube, which has always had a huge dark side, inform your child's school so that more parents can know and possibly your MP. If you don't see anything wrong with this then fine and sorry for wasting your time.