Warning: Peppa Videos Online have sparked a BBC investigation finding many YouTube clips of the piggy can turn dark with distressing and damaging storylines.
Thousands of videos on YouTube look like versions of popular cartoons but contain disturbing and inappropriate content not suitable for children.
The BBC research called ‘Is your child watching fake cartoons‘ revealed that there a hundreds of spoof versions of the popular show online including ‘horror paraodies’ which parents are not realising their children are viewing.
The themes which include murder, violence and stalking are highly unsuitable for children and could have damaging consequences if children were to watch them. There is also episodes where normal childhood experiences such as going to the park or dentist become terrifying.
The BBC investigation found it wasn’t just ‘Peppa Pig’ that had such knock-off episodes with inappropriate themes there was also examples including Disney’s ‘Frozen’ and ‘Minions’ with storylines unsuitable for children.
A spokesperson for YouTube told the BBC: ‘Flagged videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any videos that don’t belong in the app are removed within hours. For parents who want a more restricted experience, we recommend that they turn off the Search feature in the app.’
How to avoid inappropriate videos on YouTube
• The YouTube Kids app filters out most – but not all – of the disturbing videos.
• YouTube suggests turning on “restricted mode” which can be found at the bottom of YouTube pages:
As well as taking this advice Mum Central would also suggest ensuring that your child is using the childrens / junior version of YouTube and that children should not be allowed to use devices unsupervised.
Specifically for those who’s children wish to watch Peppa it would be worthwhile instead of using YouTube to use the ABC for Kids app which would guarantee all content is authentic and safe for young people’s viewing.
