Parents believe that while watching videos on YouTube Kids — a special children’s version of the video platform is their child protected from all the bad and dangerous. But, here, as it turns out, you need to be alert.
Fri Hess, a pediatrician from Ocala (FL), was horrified to find on YouTube and YouTube Kids videos with instructions on how to commit suicide. For the first time, women saw this movie back in July, after warning another mother. She said she and her son watched on YouTube Kids cartoons, when suddenly in the middle of one of them in the preview there was a man in dark glasses and began to tell me how to cut my veins on her wrists. Then Hess saw to it that the administration has removed this video.
However, last week the woman again found a similar video is already on a common platform YouTube.
«Remember, children: across — to attract attention, along — for the result», explains to children the man, mimicking the process of opening a vein in the forearm.
This is a cartoon on @YouTube. At 4.44 secs a man is spliced in showing children how to properly slit their wrists. #thisisnotok #protectourkids #parentsdemandaction. Link to full video and to report in comments. pic.twitter.com/ur1xVpLoqR
— PediMom, Dr. Free N. Hess (@thepedimom) February 15, 2019
Free Hess urged everyone to report the video to be blocked. But, as the woman reported in his blog, it was done only a few days.
«It makes me angry, sad and upset,’ said a concerned mother in an interview with CNN. I’m a pediatrician, and I see that more and more children come to thoughts to harm yourself and try to commit suicide. I have no doubt that social media and similar things contribute to this». According to her, in the emergency Department in connection with the suicide attempt comes 157 thousand patients at the age from 10 to 24 years.
When the woman came on YouTube Kids to learn the amount of such content, she was stunned. There was a video that promotes not only suicide, but also rape, human trafficking, assault and domestic violence. In one video, obviously created under the influence of the video game Minecraft was even presented school shooting.
«There were so many that I had to stop fixing [of evidence],» said the doctor.
Free Hess requires that the information giant Google, which owns YouTube, began to pay more attention to the safety of children’s content.
«We appreciate the people that attract our attention to the problematic content — to respond to the complaint women YouTube administration. — Tagged videos are manually checked 24/7, and any videos, [subjective] is not relevant to the application are removed».
However, the pediatrician believes that parents should devote a lot of time on this issue and to educate their children themselves, telling what they can find on the Internet and how it may affect them.
«There is a difference between what children know about technology, and what you know their parents, because the parents had not grown up on them, says Free Hess. — Children are digital natives and parents the digital immigrants.»
