Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, psychology professor, on AI videos for children: “We’re at the beginning of a monster problem”

Parents have enough on their plates to deal with as is, but there is a new and worrying development concerning online content of which they should be aware, A.I. slop videos targeted at children that claim to be educational.

While most child development experts recommend that parents should avoid screen time for children under the age of two, it’s a common sight to see toddlers with a smartphone or tablet watching cartoons to kept them occupied while their parents are busy with a task.

“The more content I find, the more horrified I get”

Typically, the go-to place is YouTube, but unscrupulous actors are flooding the platform with A.I. generated slop according to a joint investigation carried out by Mother Jones and The 47. Some of the content is showing kids “downright dangerous” behaviors that they could end up mimicking says Carla Engelbrecht, who has 25 years of experience creating educational content for children at Netflix, Sesame Workshop, and PBS Kids.

One of the videos that the investigators highlighted, ‘Vroom Vroom! Car Ride Song | Educational Nursery Rhyme for Kids’, is supposed to promote road safety does quite the contrary, with children seated in the front seats not wearing seatbelts in one scene, then in another walking down the middle of the road in traffic.

Another example presented is a video that is supposed to help children learn their vowels but shows constants instead and the audio doesn’t align with the letters that it proports to teach. In a third, for learning the 50 states, the text of the names are mangled: “Ribio Island, Conmecticut, Oklolodia, Louggisslia.”

“The more content I find, the more horrified I get,” Engelbrecht said.

Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, says that this is “toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale,” adding, “it’s very risky for the developing brain.”

You may have heard of the term “brainrot” from doomscrolling content online. However, Suskind says these kinds of videos are far worse in the case of children because they are causing “brain stunt.”

Children’s brain are like sponges, soaking up information and experiences, which are “building a million new neural connections,” she explained, warning, “you will be unintentionally wiring the brain in incorrect ways.”

“A monster problem”

Unfortunately, for the time being, the task of making sure children aren’t exposed to A.I. generated slop videos will fall on parents says Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University and senior fellow at Brookings Institution. “We’re at the beginning of a monster problem, and we have to get hold of it quickly,” she warned.

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