{"id":531230,"date":"2026-03-18T17:37:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T17:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531230\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T17:37:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T17:37:15","slug":"this-is-your-kids-brain-on-ai-slop-mother-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/531230\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Your Kid\u2019s Brain on AI Slop \u2013 Mother Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tGet your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.<\/a><\/p>\n

This story\u00a0was co-published with\u00a0The 74,<\/a>\u00a0a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on education in America.\u00a0Sign up for their early learning Substack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a video that has been played almost 50,000 times since it was posted five months ago, two cartoon children sing along as they guide viewers through the experience of riding in a car amid a vividly colored, utopian backdrop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At first, the video<\/a> seems harmless. The song is upbeat and informative. The animation aligns with the promised subject.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Except, hold on a second, did those lyrics just say, \u201cRed means stop, and green means right\u201d? And why are the characters changing in every frame\u2014different hairstyles and colors, slightly different outfits for the girl and boy?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Worst of all, for a video that purports to be \u201ceducational,\u201d the visuals are sending precisely the wrong message about riding in a car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The video opens with the children riding, without seatbelts, in the front row of a moving vehicle. The next scene shows the girl defying physics, floating alongside a moving car, while the boy is seated in what appears to be the hood of the vehicle as it travels backward down a busy street. <\/p>\n

The third and fourth scenes show the children walking in the middle of the road with moving cars behind them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"In a video called \u201cVroom Vroom! Car Ride Song,\u201d the cartoon children sing, \u201cRed means stop, and green means right.\u201d YouTube<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not hard to imagine how the video could have gotten so many views.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maybe a parent needs to complete a task\u2014fold some laundry, get dinner ready, hop in the shower\u2014and is searching for an age-appropriate video on YouTube to entertain their toddler during that short time. Perhaps that toddler, increasingly independent and prone to running off, needs a better grasp of road safety. \u201cVroom Vroom! Car Ride Song | Educational Nursery Rhyme for Kids\u201d presents itself as a win-win solution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But children\u2019s media experts say this is AI-generated \u201cslop,\u201d and that it has infiltrated the internet, preying on young children and their unsuspecting caregivers. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the beginning of a monster problem, and we have to get hold of it quickly,\u201d said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University and senior fellow at Brookings Institution who studies child development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re at the beginning of a monster problem, and we have to get hold of it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

She and other researchers, including Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, have warned<\/a> that AI-derived products for babies and children need to be reined in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not neutral content,\u201d said Suskind, author of the forthcoming book Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity, and Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI<\/a>. \u201cI think of this as toddler AI misinformation at an industrial scale. It\u2019s very risky for the developing brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"YouTube creators who publish AI-generated videos are producing content for children at a breathtaking speed, as seen on the time stamps from Jo Jo Funland\u2019s account.YouTube<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to say just how pervasive this type of content is, but it\u2019s clear the problem is widespread and getting worse. One report<\/a> published by video-editing company Kapwing in November 2025 found that about 21 percent of YouTube\u2019s feed consists of low-quality, AI-generated videos.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jo Jo Funland<\/a>, the creator of the \u201cVroom Vroom! Car Ride Song,\u201d has posted more than 10,000 videos since its first release just seven months ago, in August 2025. That\u2019s an average of about 50 new videos each day. Sesame Street<\/a>, meanwhile, has published about 3,900 videos on YouTube in its entire 20 years on the platform.<\/p>\n

The cognitive decline associated with the consumption of AI slop\u2014such as a shortened attention span, decreased focus, and mental fog\u2014is sometimes referred to as \u201cbrainrot.\u201d But when the audience is children, there\u2019s not much to rot, Suskind said. Because a child\u2019s brain is still in its early development, still being built, what you get instead, she said, is \u201cbrain stunt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery experience is building a million new neural connections,\u201d Suskind said of children who are still in their early years. \u201cYou will be unintentionally wiring the brain in incorrect ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

That comes at a cost. A child may absorb the implicit messages of something like the Vroom Vroom video and end up mimicking the \u201cdownright dangerous\u201d behaviors they saw depicted there, said Carla Engelbrecht, who has created digital experiences for children\u2019s media brands such as Sesame Street, PBS Kids, and Highlights for Children and considers herself an AI educator and creator.<\/p>\n

Engelbrecht is also something of a whistleblower<\/a> when it comes to child-targeted AI slop. She has found countless examples of AI-generated videos that could cause real physical harm.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe more content I find,\u201d she said, \u201cthe more horrified I get.\u201d<\/p>\n

They include videos of a scared child<\/a> being chased by a T-Rex; a crawling baby<\/a> biting into an apple that appears bloody, swallowing whole grapes (a major choking hazard<\/a>), and eating honey (which carries the potentially fatal risk of infant botulism<\/a>) and a teacher<\/a> eating raw elderberries (which are toxic when uncooked).<\/p>\n

\"ScreenshotIn a video called \u201cDinosaur at the Window,\u201d a T-Rex scares a small child.YouTube<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another category of AI slop in kids\u2019 media, she said, with consequences that are more difficult to capture. These videos claim to pertain to learning and development, focusing on topics like literacy and numeracy, but due to the speed with which they are produced and the lack of quality checks, they end up introducing or enforcing the wrong lessons. And sometimes, the errors don\u2019t come until midway through the content. That means if a parent previews the first few seconds of a video, they may miss the unreliable information that appears later in the clip.<\/p>\n

A video<\/a> about vowels includes visuals of consonants. It also depicts letters on screen that don\u2019t align with the audio overlay. A video<\/a> promising to teach about the 50 US. states sings along as butchered state names appear in text at the bottom of the screen \u2014\u00a0Ribio Island, Conmecticut, Oklolodia, Louggisslia. A video<\/a> about the seven continents frequently shows a compass with more than four points and indecipherable symbols where the \u201cN,\u201d \u201cS,\u201d \u201cE\u201d and \u201cW\u201d should be.<\/p>\n

These may seem like silly slips from a machine, but for a child, every \u201cinput\u201d is part of their learning process, Engelbrecht explained. \u201cMixed signals means you are delaying them learning the cause and effect of a thing,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you learn that red is blue and blue is red, that\u2019s a delay.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re inconsistent, it takes that much longer to learn,\u201d she added. \u201cEvery delay they have means everything else gets pushed back. That\u2019s taking their executive function offline to go learn nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amid all of this internet muck, the question of responsibility is a tricky one.<\/p>\n

\u201cFundamentally, everybody has a responsibility,\u201d Engelbrecht said, including platforms like YouTube; companies that operate large-language models, like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic; the people creating and publishing these poor-quality videos intended to reach kids; and parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

YouTube\u2019s current policy<\/a> requires creators to disclose videos that have been generated by or altered with AI when that content \u201cseems realistic.\u201d This does not apply to cartoons and animated content<\/a>\u2014which seems to be the majority of what\u2019s reaching children\u2014because it has long been assumed to be fictional content, Engelbrecht explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The platform does have stricter \u201cquality principles<\/a>\u201d for content targeting children than it does for its general viewership, said Boot Bullwinkle, a YouTube spokesperson, in a statement. It also has a \u201cchild safety policy<\/a>.\u201d (These web pages, however, do not specifically address the use of AI.)<\/p>\n

Due to the volume of content on the platform, YouTube does not catch every video that violates its policies. (It did take action against at least seven channels on the platform in response to The 74\u2019s reporting, including terminating two.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trust that parents and families put in YouTube is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we\u2019ve invested deeply in age-appropriate environments that empower parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trust that parents and families put in YouTube is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we\u2019ve invested deeply in age-appropriate environments that empower parents,\u201d Bullwinkle wrote in the statement. \u201cYouTube Kids, for instance, offers industry-leading parental controls and rigorous quality principles<\/a> designed to provide a safer experience for families.\u201d<\/p>\n

YouTube Kids is a distinct version of the platform with content that has been curated for children from birth to 12. Many families continue to use the main YouTube platform to view children\u2019s content, though, which means many creators still have an audience and earning opportunities there. None of the AI-generated videos reviewed for this story were found on YouTube Kids, although recent reporting<\/a> in The New York Times found AI videos had penetrated that space as well.<\/p>\n

Sierra Boone, executive producer of Boone Productions, a children\u2019s media production company that makes original content for children ages 2 to 6, noted that kid-friendly competitors to YouTube, such as Sensical<\/a> by Common Sense Media and Meevee<\/a>, do exist. But they have struggled to break through to families.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOvercoming that juggernaut is extremely difficult,\u201d Engelbrecht said of YouTube. \u201cThere\u2019s a graveyard full of failed attempts to create a safe YouTube alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Boone suggested that some effective labeling would go a long way, not unlike the \u201ccontent credentials<\/a>\u201d LinkedIn is phasing in, which aim to disclose when media has been created or edited by AI, in part or in whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Engelbrecht thinks labels are a good idea, not least because they would be important for AI literacy, but she also believes they would penalize creators like her who use AI \u201cthoughtfully\u201d in their work. (She is developing<\/a>, among other projects, an AI tool that detects AI slop in children\u2019s videos on YouTube.)<\/p>\n

\"\"In a video called \u201c50 States Song for Kids,\u201d the voiceover sings, \u201cAlabama warm, Louisiana jazz,\u201d while the subtitles read, \u201cAlaboama warm, Louggisslia jazz.\u201d YouTube<\/p>\n

As for who\u2019s behind the videos, some of it is coming from overseas, but plenty of it is home-grown, created by Americans with access to phones or computers who are just trying to \u201cmake a quick buck,\u201d as Boone put it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These people are often using AI at every step of the process \u2014 to develop themes and scripts for children\u2019s videos, to generate the videos, and to automate the process of publishing the content regularly on \u201cfaceless\u201d YouTube channels<\/a>, in which the creator is anonymous and has no on-camera presence, Engelbrecht explained.<\/p>\n

A little over a year ago, a popular content creator posted a video to YouTube in which she raves about a \u201chuge opportunity\u201d that would lead to \u201cmany millionaires.\u201d The opportunity? AI-generated animated videos that inexperienced users could create with a simple prompt in just minutes. The target audience? Young children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That video has been viewed more than 335,000 times.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAI in general isn\u2019t inherently good or bad, but it exposes people\u2019s intentions,\u201d said Boone, whose production studio is responsible for The Naptime Show<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The flood of AI-generated content, she added, reveals how many people have \u201cno regard for children or how they\u2019re impacted,\u201d as long as it benefits them.<\/p>\n

\"\"In a video called \u201cLearn ABCs at Breakfast,\u201d a small baby eats a fistful of whole grapes, which are a major choking hazard for infants.YouTube<\/p>\n

For Boone, who works painstakingly with her team on every episode of The Naptime Show \u2014 researching, writing the script, editing the script, placing props, doing table reads, going to set, filming, editing the video, publishing and promoting the final product \u2014 creating children\u2019s media is an \u201chonor\u201d that should be taken seriously.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe very foundation of creating children\u2019s media is you are creating something that a child, in their core developmental years, is going to be consuming,\u201d Boone said. \u201cSo what is the level of intention that you\u2019re bringing to that? I think we need to be holding the people who are uploading this content more accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, in the absence of more regulation or content moderation, the burden falls on parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Parents are likely putting YouTube videos in front of their children in the first place because \u201cthey are already so stretched,\u201d said Suskind, who still sees patients in her pediatric practice and interacts with families often. So it\u2019s inherently challenging to ask them to more closely monitor the content that is coming through their children\u2019s screens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet that is what must be done, Hirsh-Pasek said. Until a better solution emerges, the onus is on parents to separate the slop from \u201cthe good stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe owe it to our kids to protect them,\u201d said Hirsh-Pasek. \u201cThat\u2019s what they look to parents for, to keep them in safe spaces. If we don\u2019t deal with that or do anything about that, we\u2019ve absconded [from] our responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get your news from a source that\u2019s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-531230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}