“Watching toy unboxing videos on YouTube: How Dutch parents portray the experiences of their children” - A Qualitative Research

There is a large body of literature devoted to how parents mediate and influence the media consumption of their children, also in the area of user-generated YouTube videos. However, academics have yet to conceptualise how parents portray their children’s experience of watching user-generated content, and in particular of toy unboxing videos on YouTube. In these videos, adults or children open, assemble and demonstrate new purchases mostly related to toys, and the videos are targeted primarily at young children. This current study aims to understand how Dutch parents portray their children’s experience of watching toy unboxing videos on YouTube. By means of semi-structured in-depth interviews this qualitative-oriented research essentially aims to investigate how Dutch parents make sense of their children’s toy unboxing viewing experience, and how they perceive the potential consequences as a result of watching those videos to be for their children. Furthermore, this research also examines how parents monitor this behaviour, and lastly how they perceive the future consequences of watching these videos to be. The main findings showed that Dutch parents portrayed the videos as a simple, innocent yet rich media form. The implications of viewing those videos entail the notion of inspiration, as children seem inspired how to interact with specific toys through the videos. However, parents acknowledged children do not exactly copy the act of toy unboxing, because they do not make a connection between the unboxing in the videos and their own opening of received gifts. Also, parents portrayed that children do not experience similar emotions when they watch a toy unboxing video compared to when they open a new toy themselves, except once a child is ascertained to someday own the toy in the video the act of watching becomes a highly sensational exercise. Additionally, parents indicated their child may learn from the videos by understanding the multiple functions of the toys, increase their vocabulary or even improve their social status, which may enhance their future life events. Furthermore, parents apply a strategy of distant mediation to monitor their child’s toy unboxing viewing behaviour, and seek to find the right balance between freedom and protection. Overall, parents share the opinion that their children will adjust their viewing behaviour according to their personal interests, which will potentially drive them further away from viewing toy unboxing videos on YouTube. At last, this research elaborates on several theoretical and practical implications. For instance, in the future a shared online space could be created on which parents can convey about matters such as new YouTube viewing trends and how to respond to such new online phenomena. In addition, this research contributes to the fuller understanding of contemporary digitization of 3 early childhood, and cognitive scientists could use these insights to find out how children actually cognitively process toy unboxing videos.