In late May, the advocacy group Common Sense Media held a summit on “digital well-being”. Attendees gathered inside the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, to debate the long-term effects of apps, services and electronic devices once hailed as revolutionary. The final panel was devoted to content deemed “NSFK”, or “not safe for kids”.
What was supposed to be a roundtable discussion functioned more like a public drubbing of YouTube. The video site, owned by Alphabet Inc’s Google, is in the news every week for the inane, upsetting or harmful videos involving children. A decade ago, fretful parents worried about videogames and slasher films – but today, YouTube incites greater fear. “Now parents say, ‘Bring me the violent movie’,” Jill Murphy, editor-in-chief of Common Sense, said on stage. “It’s better than a Google search box.”
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