YouTube: Different Eras and Different Videos

Every social media platform is constantly evolving right in front of our eyes on a daily basis. YouTube is in my opinion one of the biggest examples of that. From the beginning of the platform where the most popular kind of videos were simple unrehearsed vlogs to family vlogging and now where kids and babies are mostly targeted. 

I was really into YouTube from about the age 9 to 14 years old. I loved watching family vlogs where they would do daily vlogs and random challenges. I also loved to watch content house videos when those became popular in 2019 and 2020. Specifically I watched a family channel called Its R Life. This was just an average family with 6 kids where they would sometimes do daily vlogs or numerous shopping challenges. I enjoyed watching their videos and would usually watch them daily. I still follow the mom on Instagram and I saw the other day that they stopped making videos. Many of their kids have grown up and she mentioned there really was not much of a point because no one watches family vlogging anymore. The decline of popularity of family vlogging began a while ago but I believe that was solidified when the Ruby Franke news broke. Ruby Franke was the mom of the 8 Passengers family channel. It was already suspected she had been possibly abusing her children but she was officially arrested in 2023 and all of the information of what happened came out. That incident was disturbing so many people did not want to watch family content anymore and family channels were scared that they could even get compared to that situation. 

Growing up I realized how many people even began to stage their videos. Jake Paul was one of the first people who came to mind for me and there are plenty of other people who did it. Sometimes it was funny if they pulled it off well but other times it would usually just get boring or weird. 

Now it is interesting to see that one of the most popular types of videos are kid and baby videos. The target audience varies on YouTube but I could not imagine watching YouTube as a baby. Growing up in the generation where technology and iPads did not become popular until I was about 7 or 8 years old it is interesting to see now that parents are using it to entertain 2-year-olds. 

To say the least YouTube looks drastically different from just a couple years ago and even more so from when it first came out in 2005. It will be interesting to see how it looks in the future and what will be the next big thing!