| I've been seeing a ton of these warnings pop up all over about YouTube and the suicide/self-harm videos. Has anyone actually seen one of these pop up while their kids were watching something, or is this some exaggerated hysteria kind of thing? I'm not saying this isn't something to be worried about, but people on FB are freaking out about it and some pretty ridiculous stories are going around it seems. |
| I don’t know but between the pedophile issue and now this one, it’s a good reason to keep the kids off of you tube. Both as viewers and content creators. |
| It does seem urban legend-y. |
| I haven’t seen the suicide video, but I have seen the videos of characters being killed, set on fire, and other inappropriate content. My kids don’t watch YouTube anymore and won’t until Google starts doing something beyond making users police their content. |
| the pediatrician mom (or something like that) has a blog which shows the actual videos with the messed up content, she has screenshots too. "urban-y" sounds like a baby boomer who doesn't realize how messed up the internet is. /signed a millennial |
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I haven't seen that, but I've seen plenty of youtube videos aimed at kids where the youtuber starts spouting really racist, homophobic or misogynistic stuff midway through the video. If someone on a regular TV channel did that, there would be an outcry and they would lose their advertising sponsors (for the most part), but on youtube, it just goes by the wayside and no one notices until someone realizes that some youtube star is a full-fledged neo-Nazi.
I just really hate youtube for this reason. It's like every moron that you wouldn't want in your home is there virtually, thanks to youtube. |
Do you happen to have a link to her blog? Sounds like something I’d be interested in reading rather than scarymommy.com! |
| Here’s a link to the blog: https://pedimom.com/youtube-kids-scare/. No idea if it’s legit, but someone I actually know saw a video on YTK that randomly had inappropriate content spliced into the middle of a cartoon. |
I said that t feels like an urban legend. I said that because there is more hype and fear involved in telling the story than kids actually seeing the YouTube content. For example., my dd’s school had a special assembly about the Momo challenge (which was found on YouTube in the last couple of days). We got an email. I had never heard of it and then felt like throwing up after googling Momo challenge. The puppet is nightmare inducing. But there are a bunch of images and news articles but obviously no actual video. I asked my dd about, and she has no idea what anyone is talking about. FWIW I also have a 3yo and know quite well that YouTube content can be complete garbage. And I’m a millennial too, though I don’t like advertising it. |
| I have been hearing about this everywhere this week it seems. My kid isn't old enough for TV/youtube yet but this is really disturbing. I know there are sick people in the world but it's really upsetting to me there are enough people making videos to target little kids like this that it's an actual problem. |
I agree. Looked it up on Snopes today. While a few cases have been loosely connected to this "Momo" character, I do think it's mostly urban legend. |
| Does anyone have security recommendations so that kids can safely watch videos? |
| You guys it isn’t urban legend. If your kids are on YouTube, please ASK them about it!! I have several real life friends share on fb today that they asked their children about momo expecting nothing - kids dissolved into tears because they had seen it and were scared to tell their parents! It is showing up in the middle of Peppa Pig videos etc. I deleted YouTubekids last year after the whole elsagate thing was exposed. This is horrifying. |