Logan Paul is not the only issue in social media for children

For anybody who has been looking at the news in the past couple of weeks, the Logan Paul event where he found and “vlogged” his discovery of a dead body in the “Japanese Suicide Forest” is nothing new. It was a disgusting lapse in judgement for Paul to upload this video for his young audience to see.

However, the most shocking fact about this entire event is the fact that people were shocked. The internet is, and always has been, plagued with offensive content that children absorb everyday.

The fact that this issue is only now being brought up shows how little parents have been monitoring what their children watch. It shows the disconnect between Generation Z, our generation, and Generation X. Whenever parents leave children alone with their devices, they’re automatically exposed to a seemingly endless ocean of scarring videos disguised as content for children.

Parents who use their phones as a parenting tool may occasionally turn around to see what their child is watching, and may find nothing wrong with seeing something like an animated frame of Frozen’s Elsa and Spiderman hanging out on the YouTube Kids app. They would be quick to turn away and automatically assume that what their child is watching is safe and appropriate. However, this assumption is far from correct.

YouTube has been a victim of offensive content under the guise of children’s videos for years. Many of these videos feature common popular characters from cartoons and superhero series who act out very inappropriate scenes that may influence your child’s actions.

There are animated videos where Elsa and Spiderman are seen doing borderline-pornographic things, along with fetishes like being whipped or having candle wax dropped on them. There are also live action versions of these videos that use sound effects that you would expect to see in shows made for children, such as gibberish for speaking, and thumps, bumps, and dings.

The characters start off normally, but eventually are shown in skimpy outfits like bikinis, and easily bypass the filters placed by YouTube in order to “stop inappropriate content” from appearing in the Kids app.

Parents shouldn’t trust a device to care for and raise their child. There are many things that can easily influence your children and expose them to content placed by people to make a quick buck out of your child’s innocence as they get a sick laugh out of creating those videos for children.

It’s best to always monitor what your children are watching. The Logan Paul event should simply be a wake-up call for parents to become more responsible when letting their children roam the internet. It’s because parents were careless with their children that people like Logan first – and continue to – gain fame and popularity from your children.