Ries_Blog 7

Blog #7 

            As my first introduction to Kid Influencers, it was slightly disheartening to scroll through lists of famous three-year-olds. I found myself watching each of the videos with very little engagement but landed on Hulyan and Maya from the Youtube channel HulyanMaya. Off the initial site, they are six and three years-old, respectively. Since then, they have grown up a bit and Hulyan is 10 years old, with Maya being 7. They are famous enough for me to be able to google than and get an automatic answer and have over 1.7 million followers for their channel. With some videos reaching just under 10,000 views their fame cannot be understated through the channel that started with just toy testing.

            The first video I watched focused on Maya playing with a Thomas the Tank engine. She wanders around and plays with knobs on the train while her dad stands near her and points out other features. You can occasionally hear their mom calling something out, pointing out features, or suggesting she try another location while following her with the camera. It’s an odd video to watch for me and feels slightly invasive. That feeling persisted but less so with their other iterations of the channel. The channel is broken down into general toy testing, Thomas the train: a series, and some cars specifically. While they started out only with toy testing and grew their base, they were able to expand to food trials, park adventures, and cultural experiences that are shared through the eyes of the children. Many of the videos start off with “Filipino-American kids try …” or “playtime with Hulyan and Maya’s new …” *insert sponsored toy name here*. The videos are colorful, click-bait like, and use exciting language to draw your attention to them – which has all clearly been successful. Their system seems to be that one parent is in the video or vocally interacts, while the other primarily films, or they have both parents just behind the camera. Despite the kids being the ‘stars,’ I can’t help but focus on the parents who have either given them a platform or created the experiences themselves. For some reason, I don’t believe that a three-year-old asked to do all of that, no matter if they asked to or not. In doing more research, I did go to check comments to see if people had opinions on their use of the children in this manner but the comments are turned off – no doubt part of Youtube’s attempt at providing protection for the children. I don’t think the parents are doing anything wrong, but I do wonder if the kids decided they were done, would they be allowed to stop?

            I think their base is primarily adults with children or the children themselves, which I would assume has various responses. The children are more than likely to want any toy that is promoted – especially if they have watched the “playtime” videos in which you can connect with the children themselves. The parents I would assume are gaining more of a “information seeking” gratification more than the “passing time” of their children – with varying degrees of success (Whiting, 2013, p. 364). A stressed-out parent around holidays might be able to check popular toy channels like this to see ideas for their own children’s toys. The children can find entertainment as well in finding out new uses or special features of the toys they might already own. In addition, the more adventure themed videos could have a helpful sort of rating affordance in seeing how they liked the experiences. I particularly appreciated the cultural experiences shown in the videos – with videos explaining Filipino snacks that other children might not have heard of before. It could offer a learning experience while watching about their favorite upcoming toy.

            I think the amount of success they have been able to find is amazing. There are adults who have been trying to achieve that level for YEARS with no fruition and these kids can basically do this in their sleep. Is it weird that companies are using a three-year-old to promote their million-dollar company product? Yeah. Are they smart for being able to maintain it for this long? Absolutely. There is visible marketing and the family was able to get their name out quickly enough to brand themselves and people who are interested know them which is incredibly impressive.

There are positives to these types of channels, but they honestly make me more nervous than anything. As I’ve mentioned before, I really am not hip with the Influencers that I’m supposed to follow for my age – but I know that they are more often doing it on their own volition. They have brought themselves up, promoting who-knows-what, and are making their money. With these children, it seems very forced to me. I know the parents are doing their absolute best, and they’ve given these children so many good things – my reaction comes more from the times where it would be nice to just interact with the kids. I probably just don’t understand Influencing as much as I should, really. In my mind, there is a barrier there because these kids have now grown up constantly on camera. There comes a time when that could be too much and depending on how that’s handled, the kids could be very different later in life. I sound very preachy but that’s where my head went to. I would like to think that my children won’t do something like this because of the constant camera presence. I am already on my devices too much but I’m still the babysitter or nanny that comes in and makes the kids get off the television or their phones. At these ages, the kids probably only see cool new toys but seeing as how we don’t know what that does later, I hesitate to support these channels more than necessary.  

Reference:

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, 16(4), 362–369. doi: 10.1108/qmr-06-2013-0041

iloveMayThing. (n.d.). Hulyan Maya. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/user/iloveMayThing/videos