Children’s content on YouTube is getting its day in the limelight. Bid adieu to wistfully noting down how much a celebrity’s house costs on Architectural Digest, obsessively monitoring gaming videos, or watching your favourite YouTuber make subpar pasta. There’s something new reigning on YouTube, and its subjects are toddlers. Five of the top 10 most-watched videos are for children. Phonics Song with Two Words by ChuChu TV has a staggering 5 billion views.
ChuChu TV, though, is just an example. Kids’ content is the next big thing on YouTube. The highest-earning channel in the US is Cocomelon whose goodies are a favourite among children all over the world. Argentina’s El Reino Infantil has made over $100 million dollars to date. ChuChu TV is third, having made $81 million.
ChuChuTV is an educational channel with 60.2 million subscribers, making it the 8th most subscribed in India and 22nd in the world. Based in Chennai, it revamps classic nursery rhymes and kids’ songs presented by a character called ChuChu, originally based on founder Vinoth Chandar’s daughter. The creative head of the company, B.M. Krishnan, said English nursery rhymes lacked meaning and subsequently decided to fill this gap.
With animation that looks straight out of a Pixar film, explanatory graphics that teach children to love vegetables and peppy tunes that kids can dance to — it makes sense that young children and haggard parents have flocked to ChuChu TV, both for education and entertainment. It introduces kids to shapes, colours, numbers, and sounds, essentially serving the role of a play school.
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YouTube as a temporary parent
Gone are the days when children had to be read to at bedtime, with parents becoming temporary voice artists, mimicking big dogs or monsters hiding under the bed. Now we have a generation of toddlers who cannot yet read or write but can expertly swipe on the iPad, hungrily consuming one video after another. The ease and familiarity with which kids are now picking technology was unheard of a few generations ago.
The internet is a vortex. Parents have to carefully monitor their child’s internet usage — one wrong swipe and their child could be exposed to traumatic content. They also place limits on how much screen time their child can have per day. The world of the internet is no utopia; vulnerability to predators is a constant danger. And more and more parents agree with this.
For such online businesses to thrive, content needs to be regulated. Parents would have to be drawn into the world of YouTube kids.
A study conducted by the United Status’ Pew Research Centre on parental attitudes and experiences in the digital age draws the same conclusion. Most subjects said that parenting was harder than it was 20 years ago. “Many of these responses mention the increased use of technology and rapid changes that can be hard for parents to keep up with. They also mention how these technologies may be changing the behaviours and experiences of children,” the report said. “Technology has taught kids instant gratification and no patience,” a parent complains.
This is where ChuChu TV steps in. The mix of education and entertainment is appealing to parents — YouTube content has now become storybooks. ABCs are learnt, sounds and colours are understood, and there is a clear theme that runs through the entire video. A song on ‘helping mommy’ follows another on ‘playing outside’.
What has worked in ChuChu TV’s favour is also its generalised content that doesn’t cater solely to Indian audiences. It has a network of 12 channels, with languages ranging from English to Tamil to French. There’s also diversity in the animated children featured in the videos.
No wonder parents around the country breathe a sigh of relief and get much-needed down time as ChuChu TV temporarily does their job.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Humra Laeeq)