Amariani Garcia
Lantern Staff
So far, Momo has become the scariest well-known YouTube phenomenons this year and continues to break social media standards.
Well known kid’s channels reached out to their viewer’s parents and reported that parents should supervise any content before their children watch it and have higher privacy settings on YouTube and Kids YouTube. Parents recently have put more effort in supervising what their children view and have discovered that Momo was not the only inappropriate video many children watch.
As parents, they should have known social media is not a place for children. As a result, bullying and suicide rates in children have sky rocketed because of social media being pushed on children
Videos including Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol display different characters killing each other, hurting or saying offensive words toward each other and encourage them to do the same.
Momo, the scary bird woman video, shows a woman with the characteristics of a bird. The video displayed Momo talking and encouraging the children to kill their family and then themselves.
Parents took to social media to stress their concerns, debating whether it was bad parenting by shoving phones in their children’s faces rather than raising them.
“Children lose the development of cognitive skills,” said Kassie Cabrales, a recent child educator at EduCare. “They lack skills that many children in today’s society know less of because of social media being pushed on our children.”
Those who are parents have different ways they raise their children and how much technology they allow. With recent studies and research, children at such a young age should not be glued to a TV or phone screen, and parents need to put more effort into their children.
Children being on phones is a good thing when they do activities that further their education. Rather, they watch YouTube videos all day and don’t interact with other children. As a society, we tend to blame the media and the advancement in technology for bullying and mass shootings when in reality children are given the phones and the technology to do just that.
“I don’t disagree with kids being on phones,” said Gisell Gonzales, a Butler alumni majoring in primary education. “When I heard about the Momo video, it made me think why people would do that. It only makes matters worse and ruins the purpose of the internet for others as well.”
The internet has changed drastically in the last 10 years and has affected children and adults. The internet has been a resourceful way to further education and watch movies and videos. When those anonymously created children videos to corrupt and scare children surface, many start to wonder how we protect the children and if it’s a good reason to keep children on social media platforms such as YouTube.
