"I'm Gonna Be Gigga Rich!"

Happy Friday Friends,

Picture a feisty, blonde 4-year-old filled with enough attitude to last her well into her 20s. My youngest daughter Riley is a force of nature. Earlier this week she asked if she could tell me about her future husband and house. 

So, hands on hips, attitude dialled way up to 10; “Dad, my husband is gonna be tall, blonde and have green eyes - just like me. We’re going to live in a huge house. It’s gonna be gold. Everything is gonna be gold. Gold toilets and even gold pipes with gold water. We’re not gonna be just rich, we’re going to be gigga-rich.” Hilarious. What a character!

I asked where she got these ideas from. She told me about a YouTube channel she watches sometimes.

Another morning this week my oldest daughter was watching Ninja Kidz on YouTube. For those who don’t have kids; they’re a US-based (surprise surprise) family who film their life. It started with a few of their kids being gymnasts and doing American Ninja Warrior. It’s now progressed to the entire family featured in almost every episode. They travel the world and film themselves doing crazy family challenges. For context, they have 20 million subscribers. TWENTY Million! That’s almost the entire population of Australia. On YouTube views alone, they’re making millions of dollars.

“Girls Control Their Dad’s Lives for 24 Hours” was the specific episode Ruby was watching. Which was harmless, quite entertaining and I can see why Ruby thought it was “the best one ever”. Towards the end of the episode, things went downhill for me. The girls got $1,000 and had to spend it all in a certain amount of time to then get a prize. So they're buying themselves stuff, as quickly as possible and if they spend the whole amount they get rewarded with another gift.

The video has had 16 million views. Maybe you’re asking yourself what’s the big deal, it sounds entertaining. My issue is that we’re in a place in human history where watching 12-year-old girls blow $1k in a few hours is considered “entertainment.” And, what are these channels and influencers teaching our kids about life and society?

My daughter has no idea this family is making millions of dollars in advertising so $1k to them is no big deal. She sees young girls, only a few years older than herself spending money on useless crap. Their goal is to spend the money as quickly as possible. And, their dads celebrate them for it. I have to try and explain to her that this isn’t normal. Most people don’t have $1k to spend on anything they want. I tried to teach her that $1k could feed some families in Africa for a month or more. 

So before they even hit double digits my kids think every family should have shopping spree competitions. And, they want to be “gigga-rich” and drink gold water. Wow, my wife and I have our work cut out for us.

My concern with young kids watching this type of content is that it will shape their perceptions of success and happiness. Will they think that you can only be happy and successful when you have lots of money? Does it skew their vision that you don’t need to work hard in life to become wealthy or successful? Or, are they simply humans who like watching other humans? We're all voyeurs deep down.

I am sure every generation has similar concerns. My parents were worried about me watching too much TV and playing violent video games. “You’re gonna get square eyes and have violent tendencies.” I now Netflix and chill for 2-3 hours per week tops and don’t particularly like violence. Look, mom, I'm ok! It feels different somehow. My parents’ concerns were comical compared with what I am now concerned about for my children.

Sure, cartoons aren’t educational either but at worst that’s just zombie TV. Also, kids understand cartoons and TV shows aren’t real. My daughters are not jumping off their beds trying to fly like the Powerpuff Girls. These YouTube channels though are real people, filming their “real lives”. Our kids aren’t mature enough to realise that what they’re watching is only a small, edited snippet of these people’s real lives. They’re not seeing the family fights, the arguments and bad times. They see perfect families, on never-ending holidays, spending crazy sums of money on whatever they like. 

I want to give you an adult example to show it’s not only our kids but society in general that is influenced by this new form of entertainment. I am guessing most of you have heard of MrBeast. His YouTube channel has 210 Million subscribers. He is a marketing machine. He has created content on YouTube for about 15 years now so he’s put in the work and consistency to get the channel to where it is now.

He started by doing live-stream gaming videos. But, has now built a massive following by doing crazy videos that most of us couldn’t make up. He has episodes where he tries to blow $1M in 24 hours. He also buys $1M cars and puts them in car shredders for views and clicks. Mr Beast does a ton of philanthropy and his vision is to raise money from these videos to improve humanity. He is currently drilling wells in Africa so people can get access to water. So, I take nothing away from him, he is giving back to society 100 times more than any of us. 

I had a look through some of his stats; his philanthropy videos generally get around 100 million views. Yes, that’s a bonkers amount of people watching. But, the entertainment-style videos where he buys an island for shits and giggles will get over 200 million views. So double the amount of people prefer videos of him blowing money on nothing other than helping humanity.

So, at least he is using his fame and wealth for good. But, it doesn’t take away from the fact that we’re entertained by people spending massive sums of cash. And most of these YouTube stars are not giving anything back to society. MrBeast is an outlier. 

Are people living vicariously through these videos? They know they couldn’t do anything like that so it’s fascinating to see someone else do it. It's exciting to watch someone spend more money on a car than most will make in their lives. And then drive that car off a cliff into a sinkhole. We’re fascinated with watching people live their lives in front of our eyes. Reality TV has been a “fad” for about 20 years now. It seems like these YouTube channels are the new reality shows. For good or bad they’re not going anywhere so it comes down to us to figure out how to raise well-rounded children.

In this era where YouTube channels shape our children's dreams and desires, we, as parents and guardians, have a crucial role to play. It's up to us to guide them through these glittering yet sometimes misleading paths of life. We must teach them to value hard work over easy riches. Substance over appearance, and lasting happiness over fleeting thrills. Our challenge is to help them see the real from the reel. 

Good luck.

Peace, love and muscles.

Jazza

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