Ryan Kaji is an eight-year old YouTuber who first started making videos when he was three. Originally, his channel only consisted of doing unboxing videos for kid's toys, but today he does anything from skits to science experiments to vlogs with his siblings and parents. His main channel, Ryan's World, has almost 25 million subscribers. (Ryan's World, 2020). This is insane to me because even some of my favorite and popular YouTube channels don't even have nearly as many subscribers, and he's only eight! This past year, Ryan's channel brought in $26 million in earnings, which was the highest earning on YouTube last year. (Forbes, 2019). He even beat out big name YouTubers like Rhett and Link and DudePerfect. Looking at other channels that are associated with Kaji, there's currently two channels that post his videos in different languages- Spanish and Japanese. There's also another channel for his entire family, the Kaji Family channel.
The very first video on Ryan's World was posted on March 17, 2015. It's about 15 minutes long and just shows Ryan playing with a Duplo train. (Ryan's World, 2020). Ryan's most popular video on his channel has almost 2 billion views. Yes, billion, not million. That's insane to think about, especially since the video is just him finding plastic eggs that are hidden in an inflatable water slide and him opening them up. Even though his channel has matured as he's grown up, his videos still get a lot of views. He's very active on YouTube, posting a video almost everyday on his main channel and the Kaji Family channel posts multiple times a week. This definitely allows his following to keep up with Ryan and his family constantly since they're always putting out new content and reaching different age groups. The target demographic for these channels is not only for children, but families in general.
One thing that I found interesting was that the comments for almost all of his videos are turned off. This completely makes sense because there are way too many people out there who will comment anything that comes to their mind, whether it's positive or negative. Although the comments for Ryan's channel are turned off, it made me question how he can interact with his subscribers, or even if his parents care what they think. Because of this, I went on Instagram to see if they even have an account. I was kind of surprised that they had one, but it doesn't have nearly as many followers as Ryan's YouTube channel. Here, his parents really just post updates about uploading videos. His parents actually allow users to comment on Instagram posts, but I think it's severely limited considering there's roughly 100 comments on average, unless the caption asks people to comment. This could be considered one of the few occurrences that his parents allow for a participatory culture since they're asking their followers to comment. Participatory culture can be described as inviting users and followers to participate in online content. (Fuchs, 2017). Other than the posts that ask for followers to comment their thoughts, most of the comments consist of just emojis or just talk about how cute something was. Overall, they don't really interact with fans in the comments whether it's on YouTube or social media.
I think Ryan's channel resonates with children so much because it shows him being a kid even though he has a huge following and makes so much money from his videos. He plays with his siblings, plays with toys, and even plays video games with other kid-friendly creators on their channels. I think another reason why Ryan resonates with children so much because his channel literally shows him growing up, so I'm sure many bigger kids that are around his age feel like they grew up together in a sense.
Although Ryan's World is very successful and has created a family-friendly community, there are downsides to his channel. This mainly has to do with him having such a huge presence as a kid, especially since he's been on YouTube since he was three. There are definitely risks involved when allowing children on sites like YouTube, let alone letting them create content. This is probably why the comments are disabled on almost every one of his videos in order for his parents to protect their family and gain some kind of privacy. While creators have the power to set their privacy preference when it comes to comments, YouTube has enforced its Terms of Service multiple times to protect all users, including kid influencers. The most important part of this section states, "when users violate our policies against hate speech and harassment...we terminate their accounts." (Vega-Castaneda & Castaneda, 2019).
There are some dangers of letting children watch this content, but they don't really have anything to do with Ryan's channel. Most of Ryan's videos are under the "Entertainment" tag on YouTube. While his content does fall into that genre, there's not really a kid-friendly tag available. Instead, content creators have to label their channels as "kid content" which automatically puts limits on features that you would typically find on a normal YouTube channel page. This is definitely a good thing because without allowing channels to label themselves as kid-friendly, other recommended videos could pop up that have nothing to do with content like Ryan's.
While there are dangers of allowing children to watch whatever they want or click on when they're on YouTube, channels like Ryan's World, and his family channels, prove to be a safe space for kids while also entertaining them.
References:
Berg, M. (2019). The highest paid YouTube stars of 2019: The kids are killing it. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2019/12/18/the-highest-paid-youtube-stars-of-2019-the-kids-are-killing-it/#9f2ca2138cd4
Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage Publications
Ryan's World. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChGJGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w
Vega-Castaneda, L. & Castaneda, M. (2019). Hate, violence, terrorism, and social media. Teaching and Learning about Difference through Social Media. doi: 10.4324/9781351238212-7
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