Algorithms and ABCs: Associations between US parents’ educational media motivations and content quality on YouTube

Abstract

YouTube usage among young children is highly prevalent, but prior content analyses suggest that YouTube contains substantial amounts of low educational content. We examined associations between parental motivations to use media to educate, child YouTube usage, and educational content of YouTube videos viewed. We also examined associations between educational content of YouTube videos and presence of educational claims in the video title or channel name. Using surveys from 286 parents of 2-year-olds, parents were classified as having low, moderate, or high motivation to use media to educate, and YouTube videos from 133 participants were coded for educational content. Parents in the high-motivation group were significantly more likely than the low-motivation group to report regular child YouTube viewing. Parents’ educational motivation was not significantly associated with the educational quality of videos their child watched in terms of mean scores or proportion of high-quality videos. Presence of educational claims in the title or channel name was not significantly different between videos of low or high educational quality. Despite parents’ best intentions, there may be other factors impacting the quality of media that children are watching on YouTube.