YouTube: It’s Not Just About America’s Funniest Home Videos and Cats Anymore.By: Samantha Goe1/19/2018 In recent years YouTube’s successes has skyrocketed, especially with younger generations. But is this really a good thing? Is YouTube and it’s content creators (YouTubers) influence on children and teens good or bad, or can it be both?
Does anyone remember back in the early 2000’s when YouTube was just a place to go for you to watch music videos or instructional dance videos so you could dance along with the cast the next time you watched High School Musical? Well, those days are long gone. In recent years YouTube has become a social media platform for original content creators (YouTubers) to make and upload their own videos that are viewed by millions daily, most of whom are children and teens. Recently there has been a big uproar surrounding a certain YouTuber, who’s main audience is younger kids, uploading an insensitive and disrespectful video. YouTube has punished the content creator, making a public statement expressing their sorrow, promising a video like this will never circulated on their platform again, and taking actions to punish the creator himself. Because of this video more people are starting to see the impact YouTube has on kids and are wondering if the streaming site is actually okay for their children to watch. A random assortment of students and teachers were chosen for a poll and were given a list of top YouTubers and a list of very influential celebrities and they were asked to rate them on a scale of 1-10 based off who influences kids more (1 being the most influential and 10 being the least) and out of the people that answered 100% gave the top three spots to YouTubers. These people were also asked if they think the influence kids are getting is good or bad. Sarah Wahrmund, a sophomore at EHS, was asked what her opinion was and that is that it can be both, “There are some who use their influence to do good and spread good.” A lot of people that don’t regularly watch YouTube may see an article about the aforementioned disrespectful and insensitive video and think that that is what all YouTubers are like however. There are also videos that focus on things like mental health awareness and the importance of it and videos that YouTubers make to really try to help people. However, Sarah also states that there are the ones that just set a terrible example for their impressionable audiences. Is the influence the consequence of YouTube itself or from it’s individual YouTubers? Mrs. Maples, Creative Writing teacher here at EHS, also thinks that there are good things and bad things about YouTube. For instance, the way that her son learns how to play his favorite songs from YouTube videos is great, but some of the videos that her daughter watches may not be too bad themselves but because of YouTube’s autoplay feature could lead to things she shouldn’t be seeing. She also stated that she hears students talking more about Youtube censations than actual celebrities, like those seen on film or in music. What’s your opinion on YouTube? Leave a comment bellow.
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