A New Wrinkle In Its Rivalry with YouTube

As most parents never tire of explaining to their children, the entertainment landscape for kids (and everyone else) is vastly different now from what it was 10 years ago, to say nothing of when most parents of current kids were kids themselves. Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and the Disney Channel used to dominate so much screen time simply because they were the linear TV channels that programmed for kids all day, rather than in those frustrating Saturday morning or after-school blocks some of us had to contend with in the 1980s. Now, for many kids, those channels are what they watch when they’re staying at a hotel that doesn’t have Netflix; the rest of the time, it’s a streaming service like Netflix or Disney+, or a repository like YouTube.

Some older folks may have a hard time thinking of YouTube as akin to television, even as it celebrates two full decades of existence this year. So many people were introduced to it via old-media stalwarts like Saturday Night Live; YouTube, that’s where you find music videos, movie trailers, and clips of old commercials you fondly recall from your own youth, right? For the olds, maybe; for tweens whose parents were dumb enough to not block the site entirely (and I’m speaking from experience here), it’s what Elon Musk wishes Twitter was: the Everything App, a one-stop shop for video game playthroughs, meme compilations, cartoons, explainers, and, over on YouTube shorts, a recreation of the TikTok algorithm currently frying the entire country’s attention spans and/or brains.

Getting kids to stop watching YouTube once they’ve started is, unfortunately, a losing proposition, especially as they get older and need to learn some degree of self-regulation and/or cultural/media literacy. That’s a big reason why YouTube is increasingly seen as a much bigger Netflix competitor than most subscription streaming services – and why Netflix seems to be experimenting with ways to retain kids interested in (which is to say, addicted to) YouTube’s endless supply of dopamine hits.

This Halloween, for example, Netflix doesn’t just have a section of spooky-themed kids movies. They also have their own series of playlists featuring Halloween-themed episodes of shows like Gabby’s Dollhouse, Super Monsters, and Booba (for the littlest kids) or slightly older-skewing stuff like the Bad Guys Halloween special, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, and Hilda. It’s not as free-form as the YouTube version of this functionality, where any user can compile any group of existing YouTube videos into a playlist of any length. But it has a similar function, given that the various compiled shows can be otherwise unaffiliated with each other beyond sharing the same platform.

By imitating this functionality, Netflix is attempting to capture a young audience that enjoys variety even more than the typical monomania of children past. Doubtless there are still kids who watch the same movie or TV episode on a frenzied loop, but especially as they get older, they have countless opportunities to hit the “next” button and scroll through an endlessly supply of similar-yet-different content, a word I would hesitate to use if it didn’t so accurately describe the vacuity of so much stuff on YouTube, Netflix, or any entertainment business that deals in volume.

The Netflix playlists are also a tacit two-pronged pitch to parents: We can hold your child’s attention for longer than a single 22-minute episode without automatically risking them kid burning through an entire series in an afternoon, and we will reduce the pesky vetting process that often comes with a kid wanting to try a new show or streamer. This is nefarious in theory but probably valuable in practice; as the parent of a 10-year-old, I can safely say that my arbitrary dislike of certain shows because they’re poorly crafted or annoying has given way to abject fear of her stumbling across white nationalists or even “just” juvenile gamer bros while looking for Pokémon Z-A tips. Old-fashioned dross that’s nonetheless written and directed by actual professionals looks much better by comparison.

Of course, a 10-year-old is not necessarily the target audience for any of these shows. Tweens who have already been introduced to YouTube will need some degree of parental involvement if you want to make sure they’re not watching stuff that’s evil and/or slop. But the playlist functionality on Netflix could help steer younger kids in the direction of somewhat more curated shows, as well as having them sample a number of shows in quick succession. (It’s amazing how quickly kids are able to zip from a seemingly endless field of content to simulating the “there’s nothing on” complaint of yesteryear, through sheer indecision.) In an ideal world, we’d all be curating our own playlists for kids, especially younger ones, out of the good stuff (Muppet Show segments, Looney Tunes shorts, Monty Python sketches – wait, did I just show my age even worse?!). Automating the process will never work as well. But the Netflix playlists do suggest that the streamer is aware of the threat that YouTube poses – even if it’s more to their bottom line than children’s brains.

esse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.