YouTube urged by Nandy to promote higher quality children’s content
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy praised the site for ‘democratising’ content creation but urged it to show more educational videos.
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Your support makes all the difference.YouTube and other online video sites have been urged by the Government to push more “high quality” content to children.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has written to tech firms urging them to promote videos that inform children about the world and aid mental and emotional development.
Ms Nandy, who has a nine-year-old son, said: “This is something that affects my family, like every family around the country.”
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “A lot of the content that we make here in the UK is very high quality content directed towards children. It helps inform them about the world. It helps with their emotional and mental wellbeing and their development, and it’s very enjoyable as well.
“And what we’re finding is that more and more children are moving on to video-sharing platforms like YouTube.
“They’re finding their own content. It’s often not as high quality as the sort of content that the public service broadcasters and the commercial broadcasters are producing.”
Ms Nandy, appearing on Today which was guest edited by former children’s presenter Baroness Floella Benjamin, said: “I’ve written to the video-sharing platforms. The intention is that we would much prefer for them to work with us to make sure that children are able to see and find high quality content much more easily.
“There’s something great about YouTube. It’s democratising, you’ve got these people who can start their careers from their bedrooms and we’re very well aware of that.
“But there is a balance to be struck here to make sure that children can find that really good quality content.
“We were very struck by the fact that the last government had run a scheme where they put more investment into children’s content, but what they found was that, although that meant that more high quality content was made, children weren’t necessarily watching it, and we think that’s because children weren’t able to find it.
“Most children of my child’s age aren’t on live TV. They’re looking things up on the internet, they’re on their iPad, so we’ve got to make sure that they’re easily able to find that.”
She admitted that her son is on his iPad “more than I would probably like”.
The safety of our users is our main priority, and our mission is to ensure that our platform provides kids and teens with safe, age-appropriate online experiences that allow them to learn, grow and explore
YouTube told the BBC: “The safety of our users is our main priority, and our mission is to ensure that our platform provides kids and teens with safe, age-appropriate online experiences that allow them to learn, grow and explore.”
Former Play School presenter Lady Benjamin said: “I feel that children’s programmes as we know them is in crisis, in turmoil, because children are migrating to online platforms, unregulated platforms.
“Children’s practitioners haven’t got the work. The writers… what’s happened to our children’s writers? What’s happened to our children’s producers, our children’s directors?”