If you’re a parent, you may be familiar with an app called YouTube Kids. This app is an off-shoot of the popular YouTube website that was intended to act as a safe place for children to be entertained. But is it really as innocent as it seems?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. While the app was intended to protect children from disturbing content, we’ve seen time and time again that there are some things its filters just won’t catch. Since the launch of YouTube Kids in 2015, countless children have had the harmful content they were trying to avoid targeted directly to them. How does this happen?

This phenomenon, dubbed “Elsagate”, did not start in 2015, with the YouTube Kids app. YouTube channels featuring popular children's characters, such as Spider-Man or Disney princesses, performing disturbing acts have been on the site since its launch in 2007. 

From Spider-Man urinating on Elsa, to Nickelodeon characters in strip clubs, to watching their favorite characters die, children have been subjected to it all. Some of this YouTube content has even been linked to pedophile rings.

Why and How Is This Happening?

Many of the YouTube channels that are responsible for this content are outwardly kid-friendly. These channels have usernames such as “Webs and Tiaras”, “Toy Freaks”, and “The Kids Club”. With names like these, it’s no surprise that videos from these channels could autoplay when your child is watching Spider-Man clips or toy unboxings– in fact, it only takes a few autoplay cycles for these videos to start popping up.

How Can We Protect our Children?

Luckily, after #Elsagate became a trending hashtag on social media in 2017 as a direct result of these videos existing for children, YouTube reevaluated their content guidelines. However, this only succeeded in getting this content demonetized on the platform. This means that unless the content has specifically been flagged as inappropriate, your child may still come across it. 

As parents, it is our responsibility to continue flagging this disturbing content in an effort to get it taken down by YouTube. In the meantime, it’s important to make sure that your children are not left unsupervised while using the internet. After all, it can take as little as three videos for your child to go from watching a “Let It Go” music video to watching “Frozen Elsa & Anna Tear Spider-Man Apart”.