The UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has written to video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube and TikTok, urging them to promote higher quality educational content to children.
Recent statistics suggest that although a decade ago children watched an average of two hours’ television a day, that has since dropped by more than 70%. Instead, children were migrating to YouTube, TikTok and other streaming platforms between the ages of four and eight, Nandy said.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the government wanted to “open a dialogue” with the platforms initially, but that she would consider stepping in if they did not comply.
Nandy said: “A lot of content made in the UK is very high-quality content directed towards children. It helps inform them about the world, it helps with emotional wellbeing and development, and it’s very enjoyable as well.
“What we’re finding is that more and more children are moving on to video-sharing platforms like YouTube, finding their own content, and it’s often not as high quality as the sort of content public service broadcasters and commercial broadcasters are producing, and that’s one of the concerns as a government.”
The former BBC presenter Floella Benjamin, who guest-edited the show, described the platforms as a “wild west” fraught with inappropriate content.
Nandy said while the government had already strengthened measures to take down content harmful to children, she felt there was “a more profound point” around the quality of the content children were consuming.
“There’s something great about YouTube, it’s democratising, you’ve got these people who start their careers from their bedrooms. But there’s a balance to be struck to make sure children can find that really good quality content.”
Asked about the 52% decline in funding for children’s TV between 2002 and 2018, Nandy said she did not think investing more in children’s content would help, as evidence suggested the previous government’s young audiences content fund meant more content was made, but it failed to reach children who don’t watch TV.
She disagreed with Benjamin’s assessment that children’s TV was in crisis because it “genuinely is one of the crown jewels” in the UK, from CBeebies to Peppa Pig. “The job of the government is to support that and help it to flourish,” she said, noting that it tended not to be very profitable.
Nandy said she found monitoring what her nine-year-old son was doing on his iPad “a challenge”, but acknowledged that video-sharing platforms’ filters were “very good”, and appreciated that his school had instilled a Newsround-watching habit in him.
She said she had written to Ofcom to ask the regulator to prioritise children’s TV and consider the challenges as part of the public service broadcasting review that is due to report in summer.
She said it was important for the government to strike the right balance between attracting investment from platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney, without “harming or crowding out uniquely British content”.
This included striking agreements with public service broadcasters that would enable them to get more of their content online while also properly remunerating them for their investment and work, she said.
