Parents fear YouTubers are bringing ‘brain rot’ to Netflix. But are kids wising up to ‘slop’?

Parents with a ‘no YouTube’ policy have noticed Netflix Kids is ‘suddenly more shouty, more gamified and more focused on dares’. Composite: Getty Images/Guardian designView image in fullscreenParents with a ‘no YouTube’ policy have noticed Netflix Kids is ‘suddenly more shouty, more gamified and more focused on dares’. Composite: Getty Images/Guardian designParents fear YouTubers are bringing ‘brain rot’ to Netflix. But are kids wising up to ‘slop’?As streamers poach viral creators to appeal to children, digital whack-a-mole has become a new kind of family challenge

Exasperated dad Simon Hooper shakes his fist at the camera in a recent viral video. “We managed to get rid of YouTube in our household six months ago and the kids are finally OK with it,” he says, but Netflix is “now commissioning YouTubers to make their brain rot and putting it back in front of my kids’ faces”.

The precise “brain rot” he’s referring to is the arrival of a polarising show that’s lighting up parent chats around the globe. And while Salish and Jordan Matter might be new to Netflix Kids users, the father-daughter content creators are familiar to anyone who’s spent any time on the internet. Jordan Matter, who started his YouTube career in 2017 as a photography vlogger, pivoted to family content after his energetic preteen daughter, Salish – a competitive gymnast – brought viral traction to the channel in 2019 and 2020. (Famously, his YouTube bio reads, “My daughter has taken over my channel!”)

Read moreThink gamified family life challenges such as “I Went On a Fake Date To Prank My Dad” and “I Can’t Sleep Until I Find a Rare Glitter Dumpling” in the style popularised by the world’s most famous YouTuber, Mr Beast. It’s the kind of frantic, shouty, hyper-stimulating unscripted kids’ content shaped in part by an obsessive, second-by-second eye on YouTube Studio’s audience retention graphs. There are a lot of pop-up graphics and fast cuts – a style known as retention editing that has developed specifically around YouTube’s algorithm. Like Mr Beast, Jordan Matter optimises for views with aggressively A/B/C-tested, aggressively colour-saturated thumbnails.

“It’s our responsibility to ensure that we save our kids from this grey matter-destroying nonsense as they won’t do it themselves,” Hooper says. “The strength of the addiction is too strong.”

More than 3,900 comments underneath the post heartily agree, with a few exceptions. “This is super easy. You parent. That’s it. You own the house, the TV etc. Enough said.”

“The advertising thing is such a grey area,” Yates says. “I don’t mind the CrunchLab kits so much but I don’t want my kid anywhere near Roblox … and the Salish Matter show is awful. I’m thinking of cancelling the subscription because I don’t want to have to monitor every show … it’s exhausting.”

It started with Cocomelon – the mesmerising smooth-brain channel for toddlers – which moved over to Netflix in 2020, but in a concerted push Netflix have now scooped up favourites including Ms Rachel, Blippi, Danny Go!, the Stokes Twins and now Stem educator Mark Rober of CrunchLabs.

View image in fullscreenA still from CocomelonThis is entertainment of varying style, educational ambition and target age group – but crucially for Netflix, these creators have all brought prebuilt audiences and pre-honed retention knowhow to the streaming service. (Cocomelon’s parent company has notoriously tested retention of focus-group children with a sinister Distractatron.)

Read moreThe content boon for Netflix is part of a larger pattern of changing content presentation and consumption for kids that’s also reflected on Amazon Prime and Disney+. Digital whack-a-mole has become the ultimate gamified family life challenge. But unlike the Matter family, it doesn’t take place inside theme parks or between the candy-coloured aisles of Sephora. It’s a repetitive quest that happens inside the settings menus of digital interfaces.

“We’re going to see more of this sort of thing where … all of the streamers are going to start feeling like each other,” says Prof Tama Leaver, an internet studies researcher at Curtin University. In addition, “we’re going to see a lot of entry-level tiers where advertising comes back through streaming platforms”.

Many parents don’t see a problem or a distinction between traditional programs and those with their genesis on YouTube, but for those that do, and want to limit the content, Leaver says the challenges for parents are immense. “Defaults are very, very powerful and streaming companies could make it much easier for parents. Your experience as a parent of your child’s life should not be sitting in a command and control centre trying to read the thousand dashboards and apply them to their digital experiences.”

Sasha Giocondo’s two kids, aged 8 and 13, stream videos on both Netflix and YouTube, but she has always kept a much closer eye on YouTube. “I have noticed something like a ‘dopamine-crash effect’ after they watch this kind of thing on YouTube … Before, I could rely on Netflix not to produce that effect. Now I can’t.”

Parents often talk about this “crash effect”, but given the limited research, it’s not possible to draw firm conclusions on the impacts of specific media types – including on-demand streaming. A large-scale umbrella study published last week, examining data across 64 countries, linked higher childhood screen use to lower academic achievement and language development issues. But there is a growing body of correlational research about the negative impacts of fast-paced media on kids.

Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) updated its guidelines in line with research. The new guidelines step back from recommended daily limits on broadly defined “screen time”. Instead, the AAP is now mapping some of its recommendations to specific content design types, including caution around media platforms with “engagement-prolonging design” that displaces other off-screen activity.

Giocondo is among those who are troubled by the blurring of social media and long-form entertainment. “I can’t fully separate it from a broader unease about the kidfluencer industry, the pressure on young creators, and the open question of who’s really benefiting from all of it.”

Parents have solid reasons for discomfort around the treatment of kids on YouTube family channels. In a recent interview, Jordan Matter acknowledged the dark history and stressed that his daughter’s wellbeing was top of mind when striking the Netflix deal.

View image in fullscreenJordan Matter (right) says the wellbeing of his daughter, Salish, was top of mind. Photograph: Monica Schipper/Getty ImagesWhen it comes to YouTube, the medium is truly the message. The YouTube star is an avatar, compressed, commodified and optimised to compete in a ruthless attention economy. There are endless feedback loops, demanding and rewarding attention, for both the star and the viewer. For some parents watching their six-year-old daughters mimic Salish’s multi-step skincare routine, there’s something more at play.

Last year, the Matters co-founded a skincare brand for teens, Sincerely Yours, available exclusively at Sephora, after claiming that a generation of teens were feeling “equally unseen” by the skincare industry. Jordan Matter has seemed very open to Sincerely Yours brand tie-ins on Netflix. And why wouldn’t he be? Mark Rober enjoyed a massive CrunchLabs sales boost when he moved to the streaming platform last year and Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO, has been happy to publicise the fact.

Hooper’s video ultimately shows viewers how to block Salish and Jordan using Netflix parental controls. It has racked up over 60,000 likes, presumably because parental controls are far from user friendly. In the comments section parents rail that they are constantly blocking apps and channels across their devices, only to see blocked features pop up elsewhere, with YouTube and Netflix pre-installed into most smart TVs without the option to delete them. If parents do manage to restrict YouTube on their smart TV, their kid might stream it on the PlayStation instead, or watch videos made by YouTube creators through the Spotify app.

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Netflix declined to comment for this story but provided links to their parental-control instructions, with cute tips such as “Lock your profile (and other profiles on your account) with a PIN, which helps prevent your kid from disabling or overriding your parental controls. (They’re so smart these days!)” But, as Leaver points out, you can’t block Netflix shows using the app on your TV. “You’ll need to go to another device and go to the settings in the web browser.” (Streaming companies are smart too!)

Read moreUltimately, Leaver suggests that parents talking to their “kids about their media experiences is perhaps more valuable than trying to block everything that might be a little bit iffy”.

Jessica Balanzategui, an associate professor in media at RMIT University, tracks children’s streaming habits as part of an Australian Research Council project entitled Children’s Content in the Streaming Era. She says the data suggests kids are wising up.

“Our current research with tween children aged seven to 13 is demonstrating that children are developing more self-awareness and critical literacies with how algorithms and platforms feed content to them than we saw in our research in 2023. For instance, children … often tell us that YouTube is to be treated with care as it is full of ‘dodgy’ or ‘slop’ content, or even that it is ‘full of lies’.

“This indicates that families are developing some effective strategies and having robust conversations around YouTube at home.”