Children are relatively easy to entertain, given their impressionable personalities and innocent minds. iPads expose said young minds to the entire internet, and the behavior stemming from this type of exposure speaks for itself. Kids are acting bizarre and erratic. It’s just weird. The same could be said for tablet/phone games targeted towards children and toddlers with short attention spans.

Why is iPad culture so popular amongst Generation Alpha? Some children are given access to YouTube Kids, while not being inherently bad, some content shared on the platform is rather off-putting. Kids content has driven itself away from being educational and watchable for all ages, to being crack for kids and nightmare fuel for adults. A prime example of this phenomenon is the increasingly popular term used by an older demographic called “brain rot”, which showcases popular indie video game characters, loud audio, erratic camera cuts, bright colors and violent themes.

As of February 2024, YouTube Kids has been pulled from smart TVs, game consoles and some streaming devices. Not because Google has discovered the horrific content shared on their kid friendly streaming platform; they’d rather have YouTube Kids be accessible through the main YouTube app. 

Who is there to blame? Is it the parents who shove iPads into their kids’ faces and call it a day? Or the millions of content creators online capitalizing on their extremely young and vulnerable audience? YouTube has tackled a few stray channels who target younger audiences and produce disturbing content in the past, but the type of channels this generation sees now will never go away.