User:Zaiisao/Elsagate

Elsagate is a commonly used term referring to a large number of YouTube channels targeted towards young children. Most videos under this classification consist of inappropriate content such as violence, profanity, nudity, dangerous activities, and violence. Videos in this category generally consist of either digital animation or live action film. Despite YouTube's age restriction policies, Elsagate videos are sometimes engineered to circumvent child safety algorithms in place, even making their way into the family-friendly YouTube Kids mobile application, and are thus difficult to moderate due to the large scale of the platform. Despite the inappropriate nature of these videos, many have millions of views.

The term is a portmanteau of Elsa (from the Disney film Frozen) and the fictional superhero Spider-Man, two seemingly unrelated characters that are often featured together in Elsagate videos due to their vast popularity among the targeted age demographic.

Psychological effect on children
Although no major studies have taken place regarding the psychological effects of Elsagate videos on children, many parents and family members have spoken about their own anecdotal experiences on the videos on the /r/Elsagate subreddit, such as the following: My son (4) has been completely banned from YouTube for over two months and he still obsessively repeats the strange, distorted screeching and screaming sounds heard in many videos, in deep and growly voices, the ‘red, blue, etc’, the family finger.

She wanted to pretend to be a baby a lot. She was 3. She threw tantrums when I wouldn’t let her watch the videos anymore. She was supervised when we did watch them, but always wanted me to click on ones that involved toilets and crying children.

My nephew is 6 and has trouble sleeping. Wakes up at night saying he’s dreaming of monsters and blood.

I learned about these videos a long while ago because I caught my kids watching them. They thought they were just watching kids shows since they had all their favorite characters. They didn’t really understand what was going on.. which I suspect is part of the point — get them used to it at a young age so if/when it happens to them they think it’s normal.

Response from YouTube
On August 2017, YouTube announced its new guidelines on content and monetization. In an ongoing series of efforts to demonetize controversial and inappropriate videos, it was announced that creators would no longer be able to monetize videos which "made inappropriate use of family friendly characters."