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Anyone who hasn’t checked out children’s media for a while is in for a shock. Most prominently, the digital diet of YouTube for children can appear strange and pointless. Unboxing videos. Weird animations. Spoofs on favourite characters. And tutorials in just about anything.
Some of the anxiety adults feel about what children watch today is moral panic about social shifts: change is often unnerving, and we look for someone to blame, even if that means criticising children’s pleasures or parents’ supposedly lax standards. But children can survive and, indeed, thrive on narratives that adults find perplexing
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