YouTube and influencers in childhood. Content analysis and educational proposals

YouTube e influencers en la infancia. Análisis de contenidos y propuestas educativas

YouTube e influenciadores na infância. Análise de conteúdo e propostas educacionais

Paula Renés Arellano Ph.D paula.renes@unican.es

(University of Cantabria), España

Vicent Gozálvez Pérez Ph.D Vicent.Gozalvez@uv.es

(University of Valencia), España

Inmaculada Berlanga Fernández Ph.D inmaber@gmail.com

(Internacional University of the Rioja), España

This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Renés Arellano, P., Gozálvez Pérez, V. & Berlanga Fernández, I. (2020). YouTube and influencers in childhood. Content analysis and educational proposals, Icono 14, 18 (2), 269-295. doi: 10.7195/ri14.v18i2.1455

The new digital environment, characterized by the omnipresent connection to the internet, has signified an explosion in manners of socialization that are added to the traditional ones, with emphasis on the irruption of the social networks through mobile devices (tablets and smartphones). The objective of this article is to explore the manners of socialization of Primary School children (ages between 9 to 12 years old) tied to social networks, especially YouTube, in order to delve into the features of this manner of socialization, especially in a practical and ethical sense (habits of use, types of relationships, messages and images transmitted, and underlying values). Starting from this, and in second place, the objective sought is beyond the sociological or factual description of the process of new socialization, and points to (1) the analysis of the educational dimension of the social networks (primarily YouTube), in that the social networks educate informally, and (2) the guidelines that are operational, valid or of interest to the agents who have educational responsibilities (families, professors, institutions or centers who work with minors, etc.…).

The new internet-connected mobile devices have transformed our day to day lives, but, in what terms is this transformation occurring? What are the dangers and benefits? Given the speed of the changes surrounding the new techno-communicative reality, these questions will have to be re-formulated constantly, by re-considering the criteria that aid in the evaluation of this reality.

Mobile technology with an internet connection has introduced new habits in the life of people. The Smartphone brings together multiple forms of communication, such as the transmission of images and videos and navigation around the Web, aside from a telephone connection, a trend forecasted by numerous researchers in 2012 (Luengo de la Torre, 2012). The process of digital convergence has modified the spectrum of forms of communication, and the dissemination and foothold of mobile technology worldwide is a phenomenon that will predictably be consolidated in the next few years, as described in the Horizon K-12 report (Johnson, Adams, Estrada & Freeman, 2014).

According to the ITU-2018 (International Telecommunication Union), a United Nations agency specialized in information and communication technologies, the percentage of subscription to mobile devices has grown exponentially worldwide. For example, in technologically advanced countries, such as those found in Asia, the number of subscriptions per 100 inhabitants increased from 22.6 in 2005 to 109.7 in 2018. A similar increase has been observed in the Arab states, from 26.8 in 2005, to 103.1 in 2018, and in Europe, this percentage has also been high, from 89.3 in 2005, to 120 in 2018.

According to the Informe Ditrendia: Mobile en Españay en el Mundo (Ditrendia report, Mobile in Spain and in the world, 2018), the number of mobile devices worldwide has reached 5.135 billion, indicating that 68% of the world population now owns a mobile device. And if 78 out of 100 individuals have a Smartphone in Europe, in Spain the smartphone already represents 97% of the total mobile phones owned, placing Spain in sixth place in the ranking, led by South Korea, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, Poland and Thailand, and among the first three in Europe. It is true that more than 29 million people in Spain own a Smartphone. As for the last data available for 2019 in the Statista statistics web portal, already more than 2.659 billion users possess Smartphones in the world. Likewise, the increase of digital tablets in Spain has been considerable; despite the slight decrease in sales (7.9%): three out of four homes have a Tablet.

In the following figure (ITU-2019), the increase in mobile telephone subscriptions worldwide in the last few years can be observed in a very illustrative manner (an average of 108 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2019), with the figures without a doubt higher to those experimented in other areas such as fixed-telephone subscriptions:

Figure 1:

Global ICT developments 2005-2019.

Source: ITU World Telecommunication (2019).

Likewise, the number of Internet connections has also increased. The use of the social networks in Spain has spiked in the last few years, so that the Spanish internet users connect to 6.3 social platforms weekly, a number that is superior to the European mean (5.4) and the worldwide mean (4.8), as indicated by the Connected Life report, created by Kantar TNS and disseminated by the RTVE webpage. According to this report, based on 70000 surveys given to internet users in 57 countries, the networks that were most utilized were WhatsApp (86% of the internet users utilizes it every week through the Smartphone), Facebook (83%), YouTube (72%), Twitter (45%) and Facebook Messenger (43%). Of the Spanish internet users surveyed, in 2016, 97% had a smartphone and 61% a tablet. But these data have a broader scope, not only reduced to technologically or economically-advanced countries, as only shown by the ITU report. According to Connected Life, at the worldwide level, 85% of the internet population has a Smartphone, a figure that is seven points higher than that registered in 2015, just a year before. Thus, the communication revolution where we presently find ourselves in cannot but help to reshape our world. If we are in agreement with Habermas (2009) and his theory of communicative action, which states that the human being is defined by his symbolic and communicative dimension in a given cultural environment, then everything indicates that the communicative profiles of the new digital culture will shape in great part cultural reproduction or transformation, social interaction and the shaping of personality. This means our way of being, relating and understanding ourselves as the agents of a new communication environment will be affected by these technologies. However, this has consequences on the construction of the moral personality in childhood and youth, following classical and more current cognitive parameters (Turiel, 1998; Kurtines & Gewirtz, 1991; Kohlberg, 1984; Harrison, 2014; Morgan & Kristjánsson, 2017; Arthur, Kristjánsson, Harrison, Sanderse & Wright, 2017). These topics will be discussed in the next section.

Once the phenomenon of social irruption of mobile technology has been noted, along with its undoubted global dimensions, what is of interest now is to continue research on the consequences at the social, moral and education level of this phenomenon, especially as referred to the ethical use of the social networks through mobile devices with connection to the Internet. The present study is focused on the social network YouTube and its use in mid-childhood (ages 6 to 12). This is a vulnerable collective who, even knowing the risks of the inadequate use of the Internet, navigates the Web on the fringes of the dangers that this could entail (Sabater, 2014; De-Frutos & Marcos, 2017).

YouTube is a different type of social network, because in it, what determines the relationship between users is not the written text, but the audiovisual story (videos), which is utilized by the young to disseminate ideas, beliefs and customs (Vizcaíno-Verdú, Contreras & Guzmán-Franco, 2019). From its creation in February 2005 with the first video lasting 18 seconds, showing co-founder Jawed Karim in the San Diego Zoo, YouTube has become a space in which the users upload and share videos (about 300 hours of video each minute around the world), proposing another format and narrative, beyond the traditional reading-writing manner of communication. Videos are shared with cultural, entertainment, informational, training, demonstrative or instructive content, in an unfathomable variety of topics and contents. Worldwide, the figure of 1000 million YouTube users has been discussed, a third of the total internet users, and what is interesting for the present study, is that more than half of the visits come from a Smartphone (according to the information portal of YouTube: youtube.com). According to the report Informe ditrendia: Mobile en España y en el Mundo (2016), the prospective that year pointed out that for 2019, the mobile video would imply 72% of the global mobile traffic, so that it is expected that the YouTube social network will play a predominant role in this sense.

In 2017, the data published by entities that measure traffic and popularity of webpages worldwide indicated that in the ComScore report “Mobile’s Hierarchy of Needs”, as well as the data from Alexa.com at the international level in real time, YouTube was one of the five platforms that lead the world consumption ranking by number of people. The analysis of YouTube consumption in the United Kingdom indicates that this platform is the first among the users older than 18 for the visualization of videos in every demographic segment (Morgan & Kristjánsson, 2017). The studies about the consumption of YouTube among minors and its repercussion on sociomoral development are scarce (Blackwell et al., 2014).

Sociomoral development is defined as the evolution and features of the comprehension and evaluation of social events with moral repercussions, meaning evaluations or assessments that refer to damage to oneself and others, to the interpersonal relationships and relationships of inclusion or exclusion, as well as the following of social standards of justice or behavioral correction (Turiel, 1998; Nucci, 2001; Yáñez-Canal et al., 2013).

From the pedagogic research conducted on the social networks in childhood, the work by Blackwell et al. (2014) should be underlined. These authors demonstrated that YouTube and Facebook were the most utilized networks by children aged between 8 and 12, although with different uses and contents according to age and sex, in agreement with the emotional, social and cognitive interests and development of the children. The 10 to 12 year old segment visited social networks more frequently per day (3 or more hours) that the younger segment (8 to 10 years old), who visited the networks with an average of 1-2 hours per day.

The type of content according to age range corresponded to the sociomoral development of the children, so that the older ones (10 to 12 years old) spent more time in sites showing videos and movies, and in social network sites. On the other hand, the younger ones (8-10 years old) more frequently visited television, virtual, toy and educational websites. While the children aged 11 to 12 searched the internet with more independence, more interaction with their equals and greater experimentation with their identity, the children aged 8 to 10 still tended to take part in children’s activities based on children’s television and imagination games.

Along the same line, the use of YouTube has been investigated as related to the sociomoral development in childhood. The research studies by Koh (2014) are interesting, as they studied the responses of the children when viewing fragments of videos searched in and extracted from YouTube. The authors concluded that video sharing websites (YouTube) offered opportunities for the perception, evaluation and discussion of important moral questions that were shared and commented at the global scale. He observed that the comments based on the videos shared reflected the level of judgement and moral reasoning, as well as the development of personal identity (image of oneself). And thus the most interesting conclusion: “From the point of view of education, YouTube levels the road for using video materials that are appropriate for promoting moral values and moral development” (Koh, 2014: 619), in agreement with the cognitive paradigm of Piaget and Kohlberg (Kohlberg, 1984; Turiel, 1998) on the one hand, and with the proposals of development of personal identity by Loevinger (1987) on the other.

Sometime before, Banaji (2013) analyzed the educational potential of YouTube in the sociomoral and civil dimensions. This social network, which is utilized to share videos, has the virtue of granting a social and public dimension to specific situations that are recorded and uploaded to the Web, with an undisputable moral weight: situations that generate anxiety, bewilderment and indignation, as they contain sequences that show interpersonal conflicts, racists or discriminatory attitudes, and that start the moral discussion about prejudices, social classes, nationalism or immigration. This is the reason why Banaji (2013: 69) concludes that a social network such as YouTube implies a “significant resource, although not yet considered, for educating the population, formally or informally, due to its commitments with technology, the social context, the emotional context and political rhetoric”. For example, Zahn et al. (2014) demonstrated that the creation and collaborative use of videos through YouTube offered unsurpassable educational opportunities for the acquisition of knowledge and change in attitude surrounding a problem of public health such as obesity. However, and from a perspective focused only on cognitive skills, it seems that the habitual use of YouTube in childhood does not contribute, as compare to Facebook, to the stimulation of communicative skills such as oral skills, working memory, and spelling (Alloway, Horton, Alloway & Dawson, 2013). Also, in relation to social networks in general, a survey was conducted in the UK in 2016 by the Jubilee Center for Character and Virtues at the University of Birmingham, which brought to light that most of the parents considered that access to social networks by their children had a questionable effect on their moral and affective development. Previously, another study was conducted with boys aged 11 to 14, who confirmed that the rules and recommendations of the good use of social networks were opaque or confusing. Also, it was evidenced that boys in that age range were not conscious of the consequences of some of their actions online, for example the damage that messages they send or upload to social networks could provoke (Harrison, 2014; Arthur, Kristjánsson, Harrison, Sanderse & Wright, 2017; Morgan & Kritjánsson, 2017; Harrison, 2016).

As a result of these figures, and taking into account that children and youth connect to social networks through mobile devices (Holloway, Green & Livingstone, 2013; Briggs, 2017; Santana-Vega, Gómez-Muñoz & Feliciano-García, 2019), it is not strange that the Smartphone has sparked the interest of social science research, and that its surge, advantages and risks have become an object of study in diverse disciplines, due to the knowledge of the important role these emerging technologies play for educating or teaching society about certain values, especially ethical and civil values, which are fundamental in democracy (Gozálvez & Jover, 2016). This is the reason for the present study, which will intend to analyze the contents and values provided by the influencers in the social network YouTube, especially through videos viewed and followed by children in Primary Education (aged 9 to 12 years old) in Spain, with the aim of proposing educational actions that favor the sociomoral and civil development of minors connected to YouTube via a Smartphone.

After the analysis of this phenomenon, issues arose related to what truly occurs when a child consumes or creates audiovisual or media materials in these networks, and how these have an influence on the behaviors of boys and girls. The objective is to analyze what contents are frequently consumed by the children when they are exposed to certain YouTubers. The methodological focus was qualitative, following the contributions of the analysis model of communication of the social network by Pérez-Escoda and Contreras (2018) about Musical.ly and Katz and Lazarfel in Rodrigo (2011) about the influence exerted by some influencers on their followers. In this case study, the platform chosen due to its potential was YouTube. For this, an analysis was conducted of the characteristics of the most popular profiles among children aged between 9 and 12 who participated in the study, in order to offer results and educational proposals that allow for the adequate use of YouTube.

Results

Using the results obtained from the surveys answered by children aged from 9 to 12 years old about which YouTubers they tended to follow, the answers were mainly concentrated on Spanish influencers, such as Vegetta777 or elrubiusOMG, as shown in Figure II. More specifically, elrubiusOMG and AuronPlay were coincidentally the YouTubers that were most followed by both children and adolescents in Spain, in agreement with the results obtained from the sample. A characteristic of these highly-followed six YouTubers (influencers) is that all of them have similar ages, were born around the 90’s, and most of them have other networks aside from YouTube, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Google Plus, with Wismichu and DjMariio the ones who also have a TV account in Twitch, with the last individual having a second YouTube channel named DjMaRiioOHD.

Figure 2:

YouTubers followed by Primary School children.

Source: Author created.

Based on the identification of the YouTubers that were most followed by the boys and girls who answered the questionnaire, a table was created with the most important data referring to the number of subscribers, date of creation and videos created and shared in their channels (see Table I).

Table 1:

Information of the YouTuber profiles.

Regarding the analysis of the profiles of the YouTubers considered as influencers, it was observed that the most common audience of these channels were mostly youth, without forgetting the importance of the presence and representation of companies in their channels for each YouTuber (see figure III).

Figure 3:

YouTubers audience.

Source: Author created.

As observed in Figure IV, most of these YouTubers are followed by men, mainly because the subject matter dealt with tends to be sport videogames such as football or violent games; underlining Vegetta777, Willyrex and DjMariio in which more general content appears related with jokes.

Figure 4:

Gender to which the channel is usually directed.

Source: Author created.

As for the dimensions of analysis, the following are highlighted: photo and description of each YouTuber profile, typology of videos shared, options of interface with followers (comments and subscriptions) and contents and values transmitted in the channel.

Photo and description of each YouTuber profile

As for the photos that appear in the profiles of the YouTubers (influencers), it is highlighted that most resort to objects, while only AuronPlay shows his face and Wismichu and Vegetta777 show cartoon versions of themselves; the first of only his face, and the second a middle plane emulating the protagonist in some fantastic videogame, as he describes in the content of his profile (see Figure V). In the case of elrubiusOMG, he shows the profile of the head of the trolled cat, an aspect that tends to define him in his videos; Willyrex only shows the letter W of his initials, and DjMariio has his name imitating his favorite football team represented in this name, and alluding to the subject dealt with in his channel: football and sports videogames.

Figure 5:

Visual content that appears in the profile of each YouTuber.

Source: Author created.

Typology of shared videos

Using Figure VI as the reference, whether or not each YouTuber appeared alone or in the company of other people was analyzed. It can be observed that Wismichu, AuronPlay, elrubiusOMG or DjMariio are the ones who sometimes appeared with friends or other YouTubers. In the case of Willyrex or Vegetta777, who especially focused on videogames, they normally appeared alone, although the voice of who they played with online could be overheard.

Figure 6:

People who appear in the videos of each YouTuber.

Source: Author created.

As for the analysis of the videos shown in Table II, the usual structure of each of them as a function of the YouTuber described can be observed, as well as his seal of identity and some expressions they usually utilize, highlighting that in general, they usually start and end the videos with verbal or written expressions that are common to their videos.

Table 2:

Information about the YouTuber videos.

Contents and values transmitted in the channel

As for the content that appears in the video and the values they transmit, it should be highlighted that in general, most do not use care about the language used. Only Vegetta777 tends to avoid explicit words, and when he says one, he asks for apologies (see Figure VII).

Figure 7:

Type of content that usually appears in the videos of each YouTuber.

Source: Author created.

In the case of Wismichu, this YouTuber tends to create provocative videos, without being careful about his language or manners, and usually utilizes sexist language; and although many of his jokes could be classified as “sick” and lacking education, it is also true that he is very much involved in the defense of animals, identifying himself as a vegetarian and anti-bull fighting supporter. With AuronPlay, something similar occurs as far as lack of care of the language used in his videos, although the jokes he makes are not as exaggerated.

As for elrubiusOMG, this YouTuber tends to show and dramatize his moves while playing the videogames, but without controlling his language, swearing in many occasions and making sexist comments, which are not pertinent to the videogame characters or moves performed.

Willyrex tends to work in collaboration with Vegetta777, focusing more on online videogames and moves, with the latter being the one showing his Minecraft games and caring about the language used, focusing on the moves he makes, which he records and shares afterwards.

Lastly, DjMaRiiO is focused on playing football games, broadcasting or projecting them for his followers, without caring about the language he uses.

The YouTubers described and analyzed above have become mass phenomena, and although some have more international fame and subscribers in the networks, what is certain is that Spanish children and youth consume their contents published in the channels. Regarding the objective of the content analysis of the YouTubers that are most-followed and consumed by the children, it is observed that the videogame moves they make, record and broadcast with humor in their channels, sometimes with controlled language and sometimes without controlling their language or content, makes us think about the nature of the educational value of the content viewed and consumed in YouTube by children through the mobile phone, starting with the fact that the platform promotes that the person be active (Ritzer, Dean, & Jurgeson, 2012), an aspect that can be observed in the section Typology of the videos and Information of the videos. The parodies they make of celebrities, the telephone jokes and other similar content make the children and youth laugh and follow them, which, one way or another, is influencing their sociomoral development and the construction of their moral identity (Ameneiros and Ricoy, 2015; Sánchez-Teruel, & Robles-Bello, 2016; Palomino, Arroyave and Londoño, 2018). As shown in the results, at the end of the video, most YouTubers invite their viewers to follow them, or give them a Like, independently if the content is adequate or not. The question is what values are being transmitted by these influencers, and what is being learned by the followers, boys and girls in our society, because the YouTubers selected transmit video content that does not match a democratic citizenship (Gozálvez, 2013). This is observed in their sexist and antisocial characters (being degrading to others, instrumental use of a person as an object of ridicule, use of “trolling” as a way to manipulate dialogue…), which makes necessary thinking and reflecting on the type of educational strategies that are recommended at school as well as the family when faced with the irruption of these contents in social networks such as YouTube.

In fact, “the social networks should not be understood as simple technological tools for the exchange of messages” (García, del Hoyo & Fernández, 2014:36). Behind them we find meanings and signifiers, messages and contents that incorporate assessments about reality and that have a direct or indirect influence on their young followers, a clear example that is initiated with the photo and description of each YouTuber profile. Some recent research studies on the content of videos published in YouTube indicate the problematic use of language and the audiovisual techniques found in them, stressing the need to promote adequate codes of conduct between the young people who broadcast in these networks to avoid risks, especially related to the adequate use of their digital identity (Frutos, Sánchez and Vázquez, 2014; Montes-Vozmediano, García-Jiménez & Menor-Sendra, 2017).

Following the recommendations proposed in the studies cited above, and in others such as the one from Escobar-Román (2011), which stresses the effects that could result from the use of social networks, or the studies by Callejo & Gutiérrez (2014) or Morgan & Kristjánsson (2017), who proposed the dialogue as a tool of interest to address this subject, proposals are formulated that aim to promote the adequate use of these types of platforms among children and youth, in school environments as well as in the family, with the latter education agent being an important pillar in the world of new networks (Rumayor, 2016):

• To promote a critical and reflective view of the YouTuber’s discourse to (1) promote egalitarian and non-stereotypical behaviors, (2) avoid chauvinist cyberbullying that can be perceived in YouTube, and (3) seek that the platform becomes an authentic bank of audiovisual resources that can be utilized in a (co)educational manner (Linares-Bahillo, Aristegui-Fradua & Beloki-Marañón, 2019).

• The creation of teaching resources that allow the analysis of these types of social platforms at schools. As stated by Tur-Viñes, Núñez-Gómez & González-Río (2018) in their recommendations about the need to adequately regulate and manage the YouTube channels, the children should be especially educated so that it becomes a safe and responsible environment.

• Adequate regulation by political and social institutions of the profiles and channels that children have access to habitually. These aspects seem to be progressively perceived, as shown by the new protocol that Autocontrol (Self-control), the Spanish Association of Advertisers (AEA) and the Secretary of State on Digital Advancement have been preparing this year related to a specific code about the use of Influencers on advertising, backed by pioneering decisions made in countries such as the UK, with the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which in 2018 identified the need to adequately regulate the publications sponsored in social networks.

• Empower teachers and families so that they become competent in the digital and media education of their children and students, because, as stated by Pereira, Fillol & Moura (2019: 49): “the teachers play an important role in the empowerment of the students when facing the problems in the era of digital information, but for this, they must have media training and literacy”.

• Promote a true education in media that connects the school center with the social needs and demands (Arnaiz & De Haro, 2004), that places greater value on what to follow as opposed to who to follow (Izquierdo-Iranzo and Gallardo-Echenique, 2020).

• Develop training actions oriented towards promoting family education models that allow families to strengthen their authority before the new social networks, for which training processes are required in line with the adequate and ethical use of the new virtual frameworks of social and personal interaction. Along this line, the contribution by Labrador, Requenses & Helguera (2015) is underlined, with the use of a prevention guide on the adequate use of the Internet.

• Promote, in a generalized manner, media education and literacy (UNESCO, 2011), with the aim of taking advantage of the potential of social networks related to sociomoral training in childhood and youth, as suggested by Koh (2014) or Banaji (2013), and likewise contemplating the educational treatment of the risks or dangers linked to the networks.

Therefore, continuous research is needed on the effects on children and minors of following specific YouTubers because, as according to Garduño & Sting (2017: 231), the new figure of the individual who consumes media “is the new cultural unit that is committed to the possibility of maintaining one’s own development at the expense of the “other” and “others” without a major reference point”. And the creation of preventive measures to avoid problems in the development of the moral construction of boys and girls is deemed to be more necessary. This is a line of thought defended by the authors mentioned, and at the same time by authors such as Rodríguez & Magdalena (2016), who consider it necessary and essential to provide a response to the current needs and deficiencies of the youth related to the adequate use of virtual social networks.

This work is conducted within the framework of ‘Alfamed’ (Euro-American Network of Researchers), with the support of the R+D Project “YOUTUBERS AND INSTAGRAMMERS: MEDIA COMPETENCE IN EMERGING PROSUMERS” (RTI2018-093303-B-I00), financed by the State Research Agency of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).