Is YouTube a Dangerous Place for Your Children?

[muskanhossain]

When it comes to Internet dominance, few sites rival the growth and reach of the video-sharing site YouTube.

Three years after the site’s December 2005 launch, it remains the go-to source for the latest viral videos, nostalgic clips, and performances from professionals and amateurs around the world. In December 2008 alone, more than 24 million unique visitors logged onto YouTube and viewed more than four billion videos.
But as parents have been arguing for generations, “popular” doesn’t always mean “good,” and YouTube’s rapid ascent has been accompanied by more than a few questions about its effects on younger users.
Celebrating Bad Behavior?
According to a digital ethnography study conducted by a Kansas phone number data University working group led by Professor Michael Wesch, more than 150,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube every day. Many of these videos were created by teens (YouTube policy forbids users under the age of 13), and while the vast majority of youth-created videos are relatively innocuous, a few more incendiary uploads have raised considerable concern.
For example, in March 2008, eight teens in Polk County, Florida (six girls and two boys) lured a fellow student to one of the perpetrator’s homes, where the six girls attacked and beat her, videotaping the assault with the intent to upload it to MySpace and YouTube. The victim ended up with bruises, hearing damage, and a concussion; five of the attackers pled guilty and are awaiting sentencing; and YouTube underwent a torrent of criticism (even though police confiscated the tape before it made it onto the site).
“There are many, many high school-age fight videos on YouTube,” David Samo wrote in his “Tech Scout” blog on the L.A. Times website April 8, 2008. “Just search ‘school fight’ and order the results by date. Kids of all genders, colors, ages and nationalities are fighting, all over the world. And obviously, there’s often a kid with a cellphone present to record it.”
The same day that Samo posted his critique, tech expert Farhad Manjoo published a defense of YouTube on the Machinist blog:
The idea that the Web has desensitized kids to beatings and that MySpace has given rise to teen brutality is extremely dubious. For starters, despite high-profile news stories, we've got no evidence that that's the case – that bullying, fighting, or generalized teen angst has worsened during the MySpace era.

Also, doesn't it seem just as plausible that headline-making incidents like this could deter, rather than provoke, violence in kids? They videotaped their crime to post it on YouTube: It's disgusting, but more than that, it's profoundly stupid.