Münster’s Inc. children as influencers balancing celebrity, play and paychecks

YouTube is increasingly becoming children’s first choice when selecting media content to support their interests, for entertainment, and not least for access to social networks, often out of reach of adult’s influence and judgements. YouTube allows children to participate in a number of ways, including the actual production of video content. YouTube might be described as a “wild, wild West”, which children find – simultaneously – fascinating and frightening, providing a place where children and young people themselves set the agenda, separated from the agendas set by parents, teachers, and traditional media. Also, YouTube is one of several global media platforms which – for better and for worse – have come to play a defining role in the media culture of children and adolescents. Over the last year YouTube has experienced several cases and lawsuits all pin-pointing the problematic relationship between the platform and its under-aged users. According to YouTube’s (and Google’s) own terms of service, users who wish to have a profile on the platform must be over (at least, depending on national rules) 13 years old. This has been a point of reference in the debate and in the concrete cases since YouTube have officially recommended that this age limit is to be taken seriously and that children under the age of 13 (or older, depending on country) should only use the YouTube Kids application to access videos.

Discussion of Youtube as a platform for children's play and an everyday defining role in the media culture of children and adolescents