Video on YouTube Kids features “evil Santa” asking kids to stab themselves? Fact Check

A message is spreading via social media that warns of a disturbing video spreading on YouTube Kids describes a dangerous video where, according to the message, “evil santa” will tell children watching to stab themselves in order to receive presents.

UNKNOWN

The post on social media is below.

Just a heads up for anyone with YouTube kids.
William who is 5! Just walked in and said that he’s going to put a knife in his stomach and kill himself because evil Santa told him too and it’s the only way he will get presents.
Then said he told him he can’t tell his mummy or daddy and that he should get a knife and the more people he kills the more presents he will get.
I honestly don’t know what else he has seen or heard.
This is YouTube KIDs btw. I pay extra each month for parental control.
I asked him to show me ‘evil Santa’ he said oh you can’t find him mummy he finds you and gives you tasks and if you don’t complete them he will come get you in your sleep.
Feel sick to the pit of my stomach, luckily he knew to come and tell me. But I dread to think if he didn’t.
Again this is YouTube kids WITH parental control.
I’ll be reporting this to school and anyone else I need too.
Some sick sick people out there.

The original version of this post was posted by Facebook user Les on November 1st 2021 (and since taken down) and claims a video on YouTube Kids (a video streaming app much like YouTube only designed specifically for children) is telling children to stab themselves in order to receive Christmas presents, and that the more people they kill, the more presents they will get.

At this stage it is difficult to verify the veracity or accuracy of the claims given that, even by the original poster’s own reporting, they did not see the video themselves and are offering a second-hound account that relies on a first-hand account provided by a five-year-old child.

As such, pertinent questions remain unanswered.

• Was the video actually watched on the YouTube Kids app, or was this an assumption?
• If so why did the parent or guardian not check the video history feature available in the app that shows recently watched videos?
• Is the video still there? (We searched the app and could not locate any matching video ourselves.)
• Did the child accurately recall the content of the video?
• What does the claim that “[evil Santa] will find you” mean? (YouTube Kids doesn’t have a messaging feature).
• What did the video appear to be at the start? (i.e. was it disguised as an innocuous cartoon).
• What does the poster mean by using extra parental control? YouTube Kids has free parental controls built-in and doesn’t offer ‘extra’ controls, and third party parental controls are not likely to have an affect on videos within a kid’s video streaming app.

Such answers would be the crux to a helpful and effective warning, yet given the nature of the incident, we’re left without any.

Of course this is not intended to dismiss the claims out-of-hand. It is certainly plausible that an inappropriate video was watched by a child since the platform relies partly on “algorithmic filtering” as well as user input, and YouTube Kids has in the past been criticized for inadvertently showing adult themed videos to minors, includes videos that promote violence and even cartoon videos depicting graphic car crash injuries.

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Consequently it is not outside the realms of possibility that a video more-or-less matching the description could have been available for some time to children, perhaps disguised as innocent to bypass detection filters. But given we do not know the video’s title or the link to the video, or the exact content of the video, it is difficult to apply any specific judgement to the accuracy of the circulating claims.

We reached out to YouTube who told us that despite the claims in the message, no content matching the description in the viral message was found on the YouTube Kids platform. A spokesperson also told us –

We’ve not received evidence of there being videos on YouTube Kids showing or promoting the content described in the post. Additionally, on YouTube Kids, we provide parents with free tools to customize the experience for their kids and to control what content their child can and cannot see.

It is also important to consider how claims can become embellished, twisted or warped online, or how Internet pranksters can capitalise on emerging messages or warnings to fuel them into something even more alarmist. This is what we saw during the Momo Challenge nonsense that circulated back in 2019, when an isolated incident where a child encountered inappropriate content on YouTube soon became dramatically embellished and morphed into a massive panic-inducing campaign full of exaggerated or impossible claims and online pranks.

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Whatever the conclusion here, when it comes to allowing children access to video streaming content online, we strongly recommend active “over the shoulder” parental supervision as opposed to relying on safety algorithms or parental controls to work reliably. This is especially true of younger children and platforms that allow children to jump from video to video using autoplay, and sites that use algorithms to block inappropriate content.

Platforms that use a 100% “whitelist” approach are generally the safest for children. This means only human approved content is allowed on the platform. A good example of such a platform is Netflix, which has a dedicated Just for Kids section. We have an article here about other video streaming platforms for children.

We have reached out to the original poster for further comment and will update if we hear back.

UPDATE: Nov 3rd 2021: This article has been updated with a response from YouTube.

Have you seen a video matching the description offered in the message above on YouTube Kids? Send us a link to nonsense [at] thatsnonsense [dot] com