📱 Kids these days growing up on YouTube instead of actual cartoons, feels different

Noticed my niece, seven years old, almost never actually watches a traditional cartoon channel anymore, instead spending most of her screen time on specific YouTube channels featuring other kids unboxing toys, playing games, or just narrating their own daily activities directly to a camera in a format that genuinely did not exist in anything resembling this specific way when I myself was actually her age. Mentioned this observation to my sister, her mother, and she said it happened fairly gradually without either parent actually deciding it consciously at any single specific point, the traditional cartoons simply stopped holding her attention as effectively once she discovered these particular channels, and short, algorithmically served content apparently became the actual default over time without much deliberate choice involved from anyone in the household. Part of me finds this genuinely concerning, mostly around the specific pacing and quality of content compared to more traditionally structured storytelling that actual cartoons at least generally attempted to properly deliver with some real narrative structure. But another part recognizes this might simply be an entirely normal generational shift, similar to how my own parents probably had real concerns about how much television I personally watched growing up compared to whatever came before that in their own specific childhood. What genuinely surprised me most was how much of this specific content is essentially just other regular kids doing fairly mundane things on camera, and yet it apparently holds attention in a way that carefully produced animated cartoons with actual real storylines and proper production values increasingly seem to struggle to actually compete with these days. I do not have kids of my own yet myself, so I genuinely do not have a fully informed opinion on the actual practical parenting side of managing this kind of specific screen time, but as someone who grew up with a fairly fixed cartoon schedule myself, the whole shift feels genuinely strange to actually watch happening in real time. For parents actually navigating this now themselves, how do you think about managing this specific kind of content compared to more traditional cartoons, and does it genuinely feel different to you as a parent living through it directly?

Honestly this content format existing at all still feels strange to me as an adult, watching someone else's kid do fairly ordinary things on camera purely for entertainment, though I suppose every single generation has its own version of something the previous one simply does not understand or take seriously enough to actually try engaging with themselves at all properly and thoughtfully.

There is actually a decent amount of research now specifically on this exact kind of content and attention spans in younger kids, worth a proper look if this genuinely concerns you the way it clearly does here in this specific case. Some of it is honestly more reassuring than the general online panic around it would actually suggest to a worried parent.

My own daughter went through this exact same phase around that same age, eventually cycled back to regular cartoons herself once the novelty of watching other kids on camera wore off naturally after a few months. I never actually forced the switch back, it just quietly happened on its own once something else genuinely caught her attention instead of that.