As many moms have seen, there’s a growing trend on YouTube and YouTube Kids for this weird little puppet thing called Momo to pop up and to make nefarious recommendations to children such as taking pills or wrapping a rope around their necks (my cousin actually died this way by accident at age 10, by the way), or other modes of intentional or unintentional suicide or self-harm. This is, at least, what I have gleaned from articles and commentary. I actually haven’t bore witness to this because…we don’t watch YouTube Kids at all anymore.

But first, a little background

Let me set the scene because I’m certainly not a sanctimommy; however, I am an alcohol abuser who has (finally) hung up her long-stemmed glass after too much pain, misery, and sacrifice to the almighty bottle of sauvignon blanc (and her BFF sparkling rose). I realize you’re probably scratching your heads (or a dry armpit) wondering what my experience has to do with YouTube Kids, but there’s actually a connection that’s even more terrifying than some freaky puppet telling kids to hurt themselves.

The day we cut our kids off YouTube Kids

(a not-so-incredible moment)

In the summer of 2018, The Incredibles II came out. My husband and I were appropriately excited as the original The Incredibles suffices as a fond memory for our collegiate movie-going days (with other people but, still…good times). Heck, I still remember discussing the theme in my screenwriting class.

My professor, Dr. L, stood at the front of the room, and explained that writers can identify the theme as well as “what will happen” in a movie within the first five minutes of any movie. He demonstrated with several movies. I was smitten at the concept, of understanding how something will play out by picking up on the most nuanced cue and being able ot predict an entire experience with almost perfect accuracy? I longed for the ability to forever ruin movies for myself and everyone I loved. (I call this “Hermione Granger Syndrome”.)

When finally asked what that moment in The Incredibles was and what it told us about the theme was, I replied, “Is it when Mr. Incredible says, ‘I work alone’ to Elastagirl?” The implicit assumption was that the movie’s theme was the internal conflict between the desire to be independent vs. the reality of being in a family and thus having to rely on others. Nope. It was the difference between the super and the mundane, the scene at the wedding when he has to be “more than Mr. Incredible”; though, my prof acquiesced that I’d identified a solid secondary theme. Also, I’ll give myself points that the internal and external struggle are parallel. One cannot be super alone, but we can accomplish acts of true super heroism when we unite forces.

I digress. Our two-and-a-half-year-old had become obsessed with the first The Incredibles. She’d say, “I wan-watch Credibles,” and who the were we to argue? That movie was substance for a screenwriting class in a southern Alabama college classroom. Clearly, we were doing our child a world of good by exposing her to the movie until her / our eyes bled. Also, it wasn’t Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. High fives all around.

When the second movie came out, we decided to make a nice freaking day of it. Because we came of age during the glossy, plastic-coated ‘90s with its pie-in the-sky mega-malls, Whitney Houston’s The Bodyguard soundtrack, boy bands, and a brief bell bottom revival, we assumed that the powers that be that produced the movie would have the sense to label it properly and that there was no way we’d need to read about (we didn’t want to ruin it for ourselves) nor preview the movie before taking our 7-month-old baby, our 2-year-old, and our 5-year-old to see it. I mean, we grew up at a time where our society’s greatest source of angst was whether or not Ross and Rachel would end up together. Cut us some slack.

After church on the day in question, we stopped at Mellow Mushroom just in front of the theater for a pizza lunch. Our 2YO was at an age where sitting still and being quiet at the same timewere relatively unachievable goals. Thus, my husband pulled up the YouTube Kids app and handed his phone to our daughter.

Roughly an hour later, it was time to go. When we took the phone away, she became hysterical. This was not your normal meltdown. This was a terrifying, shrill, psychotic shriek-fest that lasted several minutes. Later, after the movie (which we couldn’t finish because our children were terrified of the flashing lights and zombie people (how ironic), she’d ask for “game” (the phone with YouTube Kids). When we said no, the reaction was explosive. She was angry. She cried. She begged. She was literally suffering withdrawals after a very brief exposure. Based on her reaction, I recognized there was a problem.

The addictive truth about YouTube Kids

& how it’s changing our kids’ brains

It wasn’t until a couple of days later when I started to read that I decided that the YouTube Kids app needed to be deleted from both of our mobile devices as well as the iPad.

Like I said earlier, what I read earlier is much scarier than a ghastly puppet spewing evil bile. Before the “incredible” freak-out, my oldest daughter had been watching YouTube Kids for quite a while (the frequency of this diminished after I broke her iPad…more on that in a minute). She loved the slime videos and the surprise egg videos. I looked at it, and I thought, “What kind of freaking weirdo makes these things?” But they seemed harmless. Dumb AF, but harmless. Upon doing some research after my middle daughter’s freak out, I realized how egregiously wrong I was.

I learned that the YouTube Kids videos are tailor-made to hook our children. The über short formats are perfect for little kids’ tiny attention spans. Before they have time to get bored, guess what? A new video starts, and so they sit there and stare at the phone. Hours pass, and they don’t even know it.

That’s not even the scary part. What’s really terrifying is that YouTube Kids videos are madeto be addictive. Literally addictive. There’s usually some kind of surprise element or the promise of a surprise element. Regardless, children, like rats in a study, get used to the reward be it a constant reward or a random one. Like rats, they keep pushing the lever in the hopes of getting the reward.

How reward addiction works in the brain

Briefly, here’s what happens from a neurological standpoint when we get rewarded. Your prefrontal cortex helps your brain plan and execute activities. Beyond that, your nucleus accumbens is your brain’s pleasure center. Neurotransmitters called dopamine are released when you experience pleasure. Those neutortransmitters go to the nucleus accumbens, which sends a message to your prefrontal cortex. You learn what’s pleasurable, and you want to repeat the action.

Most pleasurable activities permit a normal release of dopamine. You should also consider that your brain learns what’s pleasurable and what’s not. Think about ice cream. You weren’t born liking or loving ice cream. But one day you tried it…possibly before you were even old enough to remember the experience. When you did it, your tiny brain released dopamine that communicated pleasure to the nucleus accumbens that you got pleasure from the activity. Your frontal cortex, a more conscious part of your brain, informed that if your mom pulled out the ice cream again, you were going to experience a delightful reward.

This is why you get excited when you’re say, at a concert and a guest artist comes out on stage—one you love but you weren’t expecting. You’re all tucked in for a great Lady Gaga performance when Justin Timberlake comes skipping out. Your brain releases a bigger hit of dopamine, and you’re hugely excited. It’s great.

How too much of a good thing changes your brain

Now, let’s talk about the dark side of things. When it comes to addictive substances and behaviors, that same process transpires. For example, when you drink alcohol, if drinking is a positive experience for you, something you look forward to at the end of a long day or something you need to have fun during a social outing, then you’ll experience a surge of dopamine when you have the drink.

Alcohol (and other drugs) increase the amount of dopamine that’s released in the brain when you drink, which means that your nucleus accumbens is overstimulated. Your prefrontal cortex can quickly get overwhelmed. Over time, it can even weaken, which is why judgement and resistance to taking another drink can become difficult.

No matter how much or how little a person drinks, this reaction happens. The strength and intensity of the experience varies based on a person’s individual composition as well as the attitude they have about alcohol. Did you know that a study found that wine doesn’t even have a taste? Our brains create a taste, which is why one published study was frequently cited under the much trendier heading that drinking wine was more stimulating for our brains than doing math. The headline implies that it’s “better” than doing math; though, that’s not what it means. It just means that more of our brains are engaged when it’s trying to figure out how to signal the taste of wine to us than when we do math. It’s a process akin to our eyes creating color when we look at the world around us. #themoreyouknow

I digress. With frequent stimulation and overstimulation, the pleasure center adapts. Soon, it requires more of a pleasurable substance or experience to trigger the same reaction. After a while, people are consuming a substance or doing an activity (like gambling or having sex or viewing porn) copiously with little to no reward. They’re like rats who keep hitting a lever to satisfy their pleasure centers (to the exclusion of doing other activities including socializing, exercising, eating, playing, etc.)

Obviously, there’s a slight difference in terms of alcoholics or drug addicts and other types of addicts who experience rewards randomly. This is the same experience our children have then they watch a short YouTube video and they see a favorite character whether it’s Mickey Mouse or an LOL Surprise or Chase from Paw Patrol pop out of a surprise egg. It’s unexpected and exciting. They get a big hit of dopamine, and they want more. They watch the next video but there’s no reward. They watch the next one, and there is one. Soon, they’re watching these videos over and over and over just waiting for the next rush.

Parents, you can’t deny that if you’ve let your kid watch YouTube Kids that they don’t or won’t sit there for hours on end staring at the screen. You have to physically take it away from them, which is usually a painful experience for you and for them. It is the rare child who can take or leave YouTube Kids.

Okay, you say, that’s fine. My kid is a little addicted. We’ll just cut back. Here’s the problem there. For one, you can moderate your kid’s consumption now, but who will be there to moderate their consumption when they grow up? No one will.

I realized through doing my research that the truly harrowing aspect of addiction is that it literally changesour brain chemistry. Most people who suffer from addiction repeat behaviors on autopilot. As their brain’s demand for increased stimulation increases, their pleasure at the experience decreases. I find this to be disturbing especially when I look at my littles. The idea that they are conditioning their nucleus accumbens to require more stimulation to feel pleasure. They’re also weakening their frontal cortexes, so that fewer and fewer activities bring them joy.

This response isn’t limited to little kids who are watching YouTube Kids. Teens and adults who get messages on their phones are no different. We are an addicted society, and we are starting them terrifyingly young these days.

My fear is that when these children enter adulthood with their altered brain chemistry, they will have little to no resistance to society’s cues that drinking is part of the norm and will drink or experiment with drugs, and when those addictive substances prey on children who have been conditioned to crave stimulation, we will truly reap what we sow, and we will pay dearly for damages being done now.

Our experience quitting YouTube Kids

So, when it’s not your addiction, it’s much easier to cut off the supply. I tried everything except just letting it go when it came to wine. I wanted to drink in moderation, but over the years, from starting out as a timid and anxious drinker who was afraid to take her first sip, afraid to get drunk, I know I’ve damaged my prefrontal cortex because I struggle to stop after just a couple of drinks. Moderation is also exhaustion. Instead, I listened to Annie Grace’s This Naked Mind and realized that I’ve taken a mind-over-matter approach to giving up unhealthy habits before. (I’m only throwing that out there for my fellow moms who want their lives back, who want to feel good, and who aren’t just living to five o’clock when they can pour that first glass.)

Unfortunately, I can’t get my now three-year-old to understand why she shouldn’t pee on herself a little beforeshe goes to the toilet, so I surely cannot expect her to understand how toxic her addictive habit was or could be. So, we quit cold turkey. The apps disappeared. Requests (okay, angry, screaming cries) for the game went on for a while. After about a week, they’d stop. Here and there, our kids would ask for the phones. If we were on a road trip, we’d sometimes acquiesce. They were most disappointed to realize that the only apps available were drawing apps, puzzle apps, and some other kid-appropriate content.

Then they’d play the games. They’d get bored with them like they do any other toys, and then they’d move on to something else. I’m not going to lie¾the withdrawal phase sucked, but kids are resilient. The good news, too, is that even if your child has experienced brain altering consequences of YouTube or other addictive substance exposure, our brains can heal and recover. In some cases, the learned addictive behavior is so ingrained that even one exposure can trigger full relapse (this is why you have people who achieve sobriety from drinking, gambling, or whatever and upon setting one foot in a casino or taking one sip throws them right back into the bottom of an addictive pit).

Here’s what we’ve discovered though, going outside and playing is way more fun than sitting around on a game. As a work-from-home mom (so stupid), I’ve had to change how I work. I do work during the day, and I expect my small ones to play with each other and their toys. I stop occasionally, but that’s the work day. When my kindergartener gets home, I stop working even if I’m not done. It’s hard because I would much rather finish my work because it makes me anxious to leave things undone. But, if I’m going to expect them to change, then the least I can do is be present.

Committing to the No-Mo(Mo) YouTube Kids Challenge

So, I’ll wrap this up with the conclusion that the biggest threat YouTube and YouTube Kids pose isn’t some oddball putting suggestions in their head. It’s the alteration to their brain chemistry that every video, even the most harmless and nonsensical ones, are having on their brains. Children need real stimulation. I’ll be the first to concur that children not easy nor are they convenient, but I also now realize that it’s more important that I stop what I’m doing, spend time with my kids, and take them outside and let them run amok, slip, fall, jump, scream, and to just have fun.

So, I ask you all to very seriously consider purging YouTube Kids from your lives. This will mean a lifestyle adjustment. It will be hard for everyone at first…your kids will have very real withdrawals; however, over time, it will get easier. Not only that, but you will be doing something that helps to preserve your child’s mental health both now and in the future (which will in turn give you some peace of mind). So, how about we say No Mo YouTube (for our) kids?