If you’ve been on YouTube for longer than ten seconds, you probably know what content farming is. For those unfamiliar, however, content farming is the practice of generating as much content as possible to force engagement and increase viewership. For example, a YouTuber uploading shorts every few hours for days on end.

Content farming is the latest fad for greedy “content creators” to garner more views to get money. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money and putting in a lot of effort to do so, pumping out ten AI-generated videos in one day is anything but hard work. Before we continue, let’s tackle that “content creator” term.

I have mixed feelings about this term as while it is a useful umbrella term that makes certain conversations easier, it’s also so…corporate. Funnily enough, corporations love to use it as it’s often put on job listings on platforms like LinkedIn. Of course, it doesn’t help that most so-called content creators just throw out either shorts with AI voices or problematic “kids” videos.

Speaking of kids, since they’re the target audience for a lot of these videos, it’s integral that we analyze what exactly is being shown to them. Channels like Cocomelon can be detrimental to kids’ mental health for many reasons, but the most important one is the destruction of their attention span.

I’m not going to discuss brain rot right now, as it’s quite frankly just a buzzword at this point. While an important subject to tackle, it can be discussed later. Instead, I will focus on the excessive amount of content being shoved onto YouTube.

Kids will say whatever they want if they’re able. Skibidi Toilet and Amazing Digital Circus aren’t making kids dumber, it’s the parents who don’t educate their kids and have them on electronics all the time. That, however, is a discussion for another time. The reason why kids are used as the target audience is because they’ll watch anything. 

Because one long video will not entertain them, content farmers concluded. To maximize profits, pump out as many videos as possible to keep the kids watching. Lo and behold, the wallets grew and the views soared. Most kids don’t care about AI. Why would they? I doubt they even know what it is.

The problem is the lack of restrictions and proper regulation around kids’ content. This is quite ironic as YouTube is too strict on content catered to adults, but it’s free real estate when it comes to children. Despite COPPA’s attempt at fixing this issue, things haven’t changed. Some may argue that it’s gotten worse, but I can’t confirm as I’m not a YouTuber.

The root of the issue lies in YouTube’s lack of consistency in its censorship. A cuss word in an adult video is too risque, but we can have strange and uncomfortable videos involving cartoon characters. YouTube has an app made for kids, yet it once had a famously gruesome gore video involving cartoon characters on it for days. YouTube as a whole has to be safer for kids, but not YouTube Kids I guess.

Common sense seems to be lacking when it comes to YouTube’s leadership, which probably isn’t a surprise at this point. Content farming is only such an issue because YouTube is too afraid to bite the bullet and completely separate kids’ and adult content. This isn’t all on YouTube, however. It takes integrity to not use underhanded methods to garner interest in your content.

YouTubers shouldn’t be botting views and likes, using AI to generate video ideas and scripts, or making incredibly repetitive ripoffs using popular media (Skibidi Toilet and Among Us come to mind). YouTubers like DanTDM, CoryxKenshin, and Markiplier are so beloved because they put in the time and effort to get where they are.

Throwing out loads of low-effort videos without any personality won’t make you famous. Still, despite the lack of accountability on these content farmers’ parts, it’s on YouTube to crack down on them. Until that is done, kids and hardworking artists, editors, writers, graphic designers, and public speakers will suffer.