In 2015, when Ryan Kaji was three years old, he asked his parents why he wasn’t on YouTube like the other kids he was watching. Ryan’s mom, Loann, and dad, Shion, created the channel Ryan ToysReview that same year, uploading videos of Ryan opening and playing with toys and conducting at-home science experiments. Initially, they thought YouTube would be just another hobby for Ryan, like swimming or gymnastics. At the very least, it was a fun way to keep their extended families in Vietnam and Japan up-to-date on Ryan’s life in Texas. But in less than a year, Ryan ToysReview, which they later renamed Ryan’s World , was one of YouTube’s top kids’ channels. [Photo: courtesy of Ryan’s World] “We saw a tipping point of the channel very early on,” says Shion, whose family’s surname is Guan—Kaji is their stage name. “We were very confused because we were uploading the videos as a hobby, and the production value wasn’t that great either. So at first my wife and I thought maybe somebody was hacking our channel.” Today, at just nine years old, Ryan is YouTube’s highest earner (child or otherwise) for three years running, according to Forbes , pulling in an estimated $29.5 million in revenue in 202o. Ryan’s World has more than 45 million subscribers across nine channels and has generated more than 62 billion lifetime views. “It’s exciting seeing people enjoying my content and what we make,” Ryan says. Children’s content is the most viewed on YouTube and has certainly made some very young people very rich. But the platform’s evolving policies around permissible content and what can be monetized has created something of an unstable environment for creators, especially for kid-centric channels such as Ryan’s World. In 2019, Google was fined $170 million because YouTube violated the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites to have certain guidelines for collecting personal data from children under 13. That fine led to YouTube creating new privacy rules around videos targeted toward kids, including limiting advertising, a key revenue stream for creators. “It hit us tremendously,” Shion says. “More than half our revenue from YouTube decreased since the new regulation.” Keeping kids safe online is paramount, but critics of YouTube’s response felt it put creators on the hook for an issue the platform created in the first place. According to the complaint , YouTube touted itself as the premier destination for kids’ content but never bothered complying with COPPA. So when the FTC finally cracked down, YouTube’s efforts seemed more reactive and sweeping, impacting creators far more than a $170 million fine flicked at a company worth billions. Kidfluencer content on YouTube is also under the eye of watchdog organizations monitoring the disclosure of advertising products and services in videos aimed at kids. The group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the FTC against Ryan’s World in 2019 accusing the Kajis of not properly flagging branded videos Read More …
