There is a new trend on YouTube where money stuck content creators are exploiting young children for views and money. These videos feature characters that are kid friendly such as Spider-man, Elsa and the Joker who are all major characters. With other easily recognizable characters being Hulk, Snow White, Anna and many others. These channels started out as a series of videos that only one or two channels made. They were quite peculiar and outlandish due to nobody making live action content with people in various costumes participating in childish acts, however creating such content racked up an insane amount of views with each video racking up a million views on a bad day.

A direct quote from one of these not so kid friendly videos “H3H3 is going down, and so is scarce.” This caused Ethan Klein,creator of the H3H3 YouTube channel, to tweet out “If I’m murdered in the next couple of months, tell the police who did it.”

This resulted in a near incomprehensible amount of money being made, also resulting in a lot of attention being brought to it. In turn, other content creators tried to recreate this success and have, however this new series of kids video is not made with the kids in mind but are made with money in mind. The production quality has gone down so much that there is a video with no other audio other than the director talking! The main intent of these channels are to put out as much videos as possible to keep the kids watching which makes them money. At some points the content creators are really hurting for views so they make the videos more extreme than just playing. They have the characters commit extremely inappropriate acts such as Spider-man and Elsa taking a bath together or they all get together to punch, kick and stab the Joker.

“It isn’t a good message for kids, it’s just for the money. They just want to keep their nice cars and houses,” said Jordan Hess.
These channels are a horrible influence for the younger generation of kids and exploit them purely for profit. The worst part is that I can already see it happening with my friend’s younger sister. She watches these horrible videos and replicates any action done in them. Only 5-years old and she not only knows nearly every swear word but says them as if they’re just another word. These videos are advertised to be “kid friendly,” however they need to be surveyed by professionals and age restricted if need be.