Mature content is one click away
users, said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, one of the groups that filed the FTC complaint.
In a letter to Google in September, Reps. David Cicilline (D.-RI) and Jeff Fortenberry (R.-Neb.) pressed the company to share information about how many children are watching YouTube.
Google wrote back last month, saying it doesn’t have age information indicating any YouTube users are under 13.
“They are acting as if everyone who used YouTube is over 13, so [The Children’s Online Privacy Act] doesn’t apply,” Mr. Cicilline said in an interview. “It just defies reality the notion that kids don’t use it.” A spokeswoman for the FTC confirmed that the agency received the YouTube complaint, but declined to say whether it was reviewing the matter.
Popular children’s content on YouTube includes cartoons and toy “unboxing” videos, and clips that are directed toward children are typically grouped together under the Parenting and Family section of the site.
However, a universe of more mature content is one click away.
Among parents who let their young ones watch YouTube, 61% said their child has encountered videos that were unsuitable for children, Pew said.
For adults, YouTube is increasingly used for more than just entertainment.
Pew found that about one in five YouTube users, or about 13% of the total population of U.S. adults, rely on the site to understand news and current events.
The growing prevalence of news content on YouTube has put pressure on the company to filter out false information and hateful content.
More than two-thirds of users say they encounter videos that “seem obviously false or untrue,” while 60% say they have seen videos of “people engaged in dangerous or troubling behavior.”
In its analysis of all YouTube users, the researchers found 81% said they at least occasionally watched the videos the site recommends after they finish watching the first video—a trend that suggests the power of the YouTube algorithm.
The researchers also found a surprising trend with this algorithm. According to Pew, each video YouTube recommends tends to be slightly longer in length than the last video a user watched.
The average video watched on YouTube is 9 minutes, 31 seconds, while the second video users watch tends to be 12 minutes,18 seconds, and gets longer after that.