YouTube isn’t social media. So why is it being banned?
Opinion
Why is YouTube likely to be included in any UK social media ban for under-16s? The MD of Ziggurat XYZ looks at the evidence.
YouTube has millions of hours of educational content. While Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat compete to be the best social media platforms, YouTube is replacing TV. It’s digital media, not social media.
All my contacts are asking, ” Why is YouTube included in the ban?” No one complains about spending two hours on YouTube, whereas TikTok binges necessitate a detox.
The long and short of it is that no government wants to be sued by Meta. Australia, France, etc, have all included YouTube too. Most likely because a freely operating YouTube in those countries, with limited competition, would have meant a visceral reaction from Meta and TikTok.
As much as we value our sovereign states, they also get worried about a mega business whose GDP alone ranks it 60th in the world.
Australia was all set to exclude YouTube from its ban on educational grounds, but last-minute lobbying meant YouTube was lumped in with the rest.
This is part of a widening global trend. France has passed a bill to ban users under 15 from major social media platforms, while Spain is planning to mandate effective age-verification systems for those under 16.
Denmark and Greece have made noises about following suit with similar age-based restrictions. Meanwhile, countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, and the UAE have already pursued their own legislative bans on major social platforms for users under 16.
Educational or hiding content made for kids?
It doesn’t help that YouTube added shorts in recent years. It’s difficult to argue that infinite feeds are good for kids. Equally, the biggest creators have partly built their fame on audiences filled with kids.
For years, traditional TV has argued that if YouTube wants to be a “broadcaster” rather than a social media platform, it has to be regulated and measured accordingly.
YouTube’s record $170m settlement for illegally gathering data on children was a warning shot that perhaps it should have heeded more. What government is now not viewing these platforms as having had a chance to clean up their act?
YouTube’s inclusion in the UK ban was not necessarily inevitable. By allowing popular creators – such as MrBeast and KSI – to maintain that their content isn’t made for kids despite their massive youth viewership, the platform has undermined its own argument.
At what point is there a point to make about “not made for kids”, when 30-50% of the audience is under 16?
Under current COPPA regulations, creators are responsible for accurate audience labelling. By avoiding the ‘Made for Kids’ label, the likes of MrBeast, Matt Beam, Dhar Mann, and so on can retain key monetisation tools and ultimately also make money for YouTube.
Had YouTube introduced a way to classify this youth audience that still accesses content through the “adult” platform, it might have more cleanly positioned the platform’s educational value. Instead of hastily lobbying via ads on the London underground around Westminster.
Key signs to me of the hidden youth audience include patterns such as creators publishing on Saturday mornings. MrBeast is “Saturday at Noon” on his gaming channel. Dude Perfect targets Saturday mornings for flagship series like Overtime and Bucket List.
Even Mark Rober is on Saturday at 10 am. Another telling pattern is how much YouTube viewership swells during the school holidays.
This is just circumstantial data, but even without logged-in users providing their age, Google lives and breathes on cookies and assumed data. It will know the indicators and correlations that make this more than circumstantial. It can guess which viewers are kids.
Analysts at eMarketer suggest that the eventual UK ban could amount to £1.3bn in ad sales. The figure’s accuracy is uncertain, but if true, it indicates significant spending in a highly regulated part of the industry. But perhaps more worrying is how much of “general classification” ad spend is actually aimed at children?
In response to YouTube’s slow self-regulation, the trend of under-16 ad spend shifting to Netflix, Disney+, etc., will only accelerate.
In the race to win the title of most-streamed platform, has YouTube created an opportunity for its competition? I’ve always questioned whether YouTube’s title win was heavily supported by the YouTube Kids app performance, but perhaps I was missing the simpler question: how much is it just based on kids, period?
The potential ban from the UK Government and future European bans might be blunt instruments, but most legislation tends that way. I’m not sure that’s a new argument. We should take it more as a headwind, and so should Google.
If I were YouTube, I’d get ahead of the legislation and address the root issues. More than anything else, governments and their electorate like to see willingness, and with the YouTube Kids app, YouTube is uniquely positioned to weather a storm that their competitors are ill-placed to respond to easily.
Charles Haynes is managing director at Ziggurat XYZ