HobbyBear is expecting a package any day now. In it will be a Silver Play Button, a plaque that YouTube gives to creators who have surpassed 100,000 subscribers. HobbyBear has a little under 99,000 now, so he hasn't quite earned the commendation. But give him a break: He's only 6. See, HobbyBear is one-fifth of HobbyKidsTV, a family-run children's channel with 3 million-plus subscribers. He and his two big brothers—HobbyPig, who's 11, and HobbyFrog, 9—each have their own channels. HobbyFrog has a plaque, so HobbyBear wants one as well. “He gets really excited whenever we get something from Amazon,” says his mother, who goes by the stage name HobbyMom. “He asks ‘Is that my silver button?!’ every time.”
“Sometimes,” HobbyBear clarifies.
“OK, sometimes,” HobbyMom says.
Listening to a 6-year-old reveal anxieties about his subscriber count is bizarre. Even for a YouTuber, HobbyBear is young. So young that it seems fair to ask him what he thinks YouTube even is. He has to think for a moment. His parents and big brothers have been on the platform since 2013, which was before he was born. He's never known life without it. “I look at it on my phone,” he says finally. “People watch stuff that's happy and good.”
Happy and good aren't words used to describe YouTube much these days. For the past three years, one scandal after another has plagued the platform. Some of its most successful grown-up stars have revealed themselves as racists, sexists, or conspiracy theorists, and its algorithms seem bent on promoting the worst the site has to offer. Discussions about kids on YouTube—whether creators or just viewers—often take on breathless tones of moral panic, and not without reason. There's a litany of woes: videos that sneak creepy stuff onto kids' screens, parent pranks that go too far, child exploitation in several odious forms. Even the YouTube Kids app, which is supposed to be safer, has not been immune. But if all you took in was HobbyKidsTV and other marquee kids' channels, you might be perplexed as to what all the flaring of nostrils is about.
HobbyKidsTV is a low-budget Disney Channel for the social media age. In a recent video, HobbyDad and HobbyKids see something mysterious on security camera footage—a “strange creature” lurching on all fours. HobbyDad and the boys scour their high-walled backyard for clues and find a huge egg, maybe triple the size of an ostrich's, in the pool. (Surprise Eggs with toys inside are a multimillion-view staple of kid YouTube. HobbyFamily claims to have invented the trend.) What could this creature be? Watch Part 2 to find out. Commenters who seem to be kids make their guesses: gorilla, Godzilla, dinosaur, pond monster.
HobbyKidsTV is one of many channels that describe themselves as “by kids, for kids.” But of course, parents decide when and where to hit Record. HobbyMom started making videos because she couldn't find any content that was age-appropriate and “educational.” (In social media, six years is an eon. “We're dinosaurs in this genre,” she says.) More parents now choose to share their kids' lives online, perhaps for the same reasons as HobbyMom, or maybe because some channels, like Ryan ToysReview, hosted by a 7-year-old, have reportedly made more than $20 million per year. Either way, the trend has flooded YouTube with content. “A parent can be overwhelmed trying to figure out what to trust,” HobbyMom says. “We want families to be able to give their kid an iPad and walk away.”
If wholesome trustworthiness is one pillar of the HobbyFamily empire, then vigilant control is the other. Getting an interview with them was a trial. HobbyKidsTV works with Pocket.watch, a kid-focused studio. While the videos show an open, happy-go-lucky family, they have publicists, and it took over two weeks of emailing to negotiate and confirm which topics would be on the record and which would most definitely be off. They imposed bans on questions concerning “negative-leaning stances” on internet child stars and about earnings. I had to submit my questions for the boys to their parents and publicists for review before a time was even set. If I hadn't worked with the team at Pocket.watch while doing previous reporting, I doubt I would have gotten the interview at all—it was the family's first, and three Pocket.watch representatives sat in.
In fact, a small army of adults is constantly making sure strangers don't step out of line in front of the HobbyKids and their young viewers. In recent months, YouTube has been disabling comments on most videos featuring minors to cut off the creeps, but HobbyMom thinks fan communication is too important to silence. So the HobbyParents had to prove to YouTube that their comments were actively moderated and “demonstrate a low risk of predatory behavior.” Human moderators—identified by the HobbyParents only as “adults in our immediate family”—rigorously redact comments to make sure each post is clean and constructive. It's a labor of many, many hours, HobbyMom says, but the HobbyParents can't recall seeing a single sinister comment. That would make them part of a very lucky and improbable minority.
Still, given the scandals that plague kid YouTube, the HobbyFamily's wary professionalism seems warranted, and extends to every part of their business. “The stage names were, number one, for fun and, number two, for privacy,” HobbyMom says. Originally, the kids lacked brands of their own: HobbyPig was HobbyKidOne and HobbyFrog was HobbyKidTwo. “When we realized we had a following, we needed to give the kids more of an identity,” she says. “And it's a little security.” None of their online fans know their first or last names, or even what state they live in.
Between video production and channel monitoring, YouTube is consuming for the HobbyFamily. The HobbyParents declined to comment on whether they've quit their day jobs, but it's hard to imagine how filming and editing eight to 12 videos a week, uploaded across multiple channels, could be anything but full-time. “We talk about YouTube in the car; we talk about it all the time,” HobbyPig says. HobbyMom describes family brainstorm sessions where everyone sits on the living room floor, riffing and trying to best one another. The “winner” gets their idea made into a video, which will have a preroll ad, up to five midroll ads, and a postroll ad, sometimes in addition to a “branded integration” within the video itself.
The kids' ambition is obvious, and it's easy to understand why. Their school friends have always known them as YouTube stars. The family's active comment moderation means YouTube is a constant positive-feedback machine for the boys. HobbyFrog's proudest YouTube moment was getting a Silver Play Button for his own channel, HobbyFrogTV, where he posts videos of himself playing Minecraft. (“Videogames are very popular right now,” he informs me.) HobbyKidsTV reaching 1 million subscribers looms large in the memory of HobbyPig, the oldest, even though at the time he didn't know what subscribers were. HobbyFrog and HobbyPig both share an ultimate goal: to stay on YouTube as long as possible. HobbyFrog dreams of making what he called “HobbyKidsTV 2.0,” which was a surprise to HobbyMom.
There's a half-joking air of manifest destiny about the HobbyKidsTV empire: “We want to take over the HobbyWorld!” HobbyMom says. According to HobbyDad, working with Pocket.watch for the past two years has given them access to a whole new set of opportunities. They're rolling out apparel and toy lines this summer, along with a cartoon series animated by Butch Hartman, the man behind iconic Nickelodeon shows like The Fairly OddParents. “It's really an honor to be on a cartoon,” HobbyPig says. (The animated characters will be based on the boys, but actors will voice the characters.)
For kids worldwide, HobbyKidsTV and channels like it are what Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network and Disney Channel used to be. Those traditional kids' channels have watched their ratings plummet for years. YouTube won't comment on what proportion of its channels are child-focused, maintaining that users under age 13 are breaking the platform's terms of service. But according to Pew Research Center, 81 percent of parents with children under 11 allow them to watch YouTube videos, and about a third do so regularly. “We're honored to have earned the respect of our parent peers,” HobbyMom says. “We get beautiful letters that kill me. ‘I'm sitting in a hospital bed with a sick kid, and I love you guys because my kid loves you.’ It's always been for the kids, and that's how it will remain.” I hope she's right.
Emma Grey Ellis (@EmmaGreyEllis is a staff writer at WIRED. She wrote about online conspiracies in issue 26.11.
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