Blog 7

Hailey's Magical Playhouse 

Even though YouTube has been around since 2005, only in the last few years has it become a big part of societies life as a whole. Now if there is something we want to learn how to do, there is probably a YouTube video about it, even my grandparents use YouTube as a way to learn and be entertained. Growing up, there was no way to watch YouTube on phones yet, my parents did not even have a laptop, and honestly I did not even know what YouTube was yet. It is crazy how quickly this platform has transformed how we live our lives that now even children can make their own content and grow a fan base. 

Hailey’s Magical Playhouse is based on an eight year old girl and was started in 2015. She currently has 2.22 Million subscribers and her latest video is from seven months ago. When just taking a quick overview of her page it looks like she tries to post a couple videos a month, however after September there has not been another video which I found interesting. Maybe because of the virus currently going on her parents made her stop. Hailey’s videos are a compilation of testing out new kids toys, pretend playing, songs, and some educational material. 

When I looked to see how Hailey interacts with her fans and scrolled down to the comments section, it was all blank and said comments are turned off. This could be for two different reasons, one is YouTube allows individual users to turn off the comments themselves, so since she is so young that could be something her parents decided to do. The other reason is if YouTube disabled the comments, I read on their website that comments are not available because “the channel’s audience is set as made for kids.” 

                   Hailey’s videos really connect and resonate with children because she is a child doing things kids her age are doing too. So the audience can connect with her on the basis of age, but also because of her content. When she pretend plays, the viewers can not only find this entertaining, but also feel like they are participating with her. Since Hailey also unboxes and reviews toys this connects with the kids that either have that certain toy or want it. This can be helpful to their parents as well so they can see how it works and can pretend them from wasting money on toys that are not worth it. Her parents do a great job of helping her play with toys and make content for both boys and girls. Especially since she is a girl it is important for her to show other girls watching that they can play with any toys they want. This also allows younger boys and girls to watch her channel instead of it being focuses on one or the other. 

Below is one of Hailey’s educational videos where she combines pretend playing with learning the alphabet. This type of content I could really see parents letting their kids watch because it does seem so innocent, but also entertaining and educational. I definitely think this type of video my parents would have let me watch and found useful. Not only in the video is the alphabet song playing in the background, but she also uses graphics and animation to keep the younger audiences attention. You may wonder how else the alphabet used in a six minute long video, well Hailey gets the viewers help by asking them to help her find the missing alphabet letters and then as she finds each letter she relates it to a word, for example, “A as in apple.”

  

Now a different example of Hailey’s content is below, where she builds a toy car garage playset. This video stood out to me because it shows that girls can play with toys that are supposed to be for boys and I think that is something super important to show her viewers. In this twelve minute video she basically just opens all the packages, puts the set together, and plays with it. It is a simple video, but also up close enough that the audience feels like they are a part of it with her.   

Even though Hailey’s videos are geared toward children there is still danger that comes along with watching her videos. Children can easily become addicted to YouTube and at such a young age it is going to be harder to break. All of the kids use online can potentially lead to digital drama, which is “occurrence of and reactions to negative online consumer behaviors” (2017) so these young kids can see other people bullying each other online and grow up thinking that is okay or normal.

There is also a danger when you allow your child to be online in such a public way. There are plenty of mean people in the world and having you child on this platform puts them in a vulnerable spot to experience that, whether it happens to them or they see if happen to someone else. Luckily, Hailey does not have her comments on, but if she did, she would be susceptible to viewers writing negative things about her or her content. Especially, as a young girl growing up personally experiencing this type of negativity can affect the way she looks at herself and even the world, which can turn badly very quick. Even though her comments are currently off, viewers can still dislike the video, which to a child can be upsetting and sad. With all of this technology nowadays there is also a possibility that someone could track her location or figure out where she is from since privacy nowadays online is hard to keep.    

References 

Choose comment settings - YouTube Help. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9482556?hl=en

Scheinbaum. Angela. (2017). A Framework For The Dark Side of Social Media From Digital Drama to Digital Over-Enhancement. New York: Routledge.