The cyber rabbit hole – delivering unending ‘abundance’ – The Wall Street Journal

It's the algorithm, you know. A game-changing data-gathering cyber vehicle that goes wherever a programmer tells it to and collects whatever it's 'told' to in the digital universe. When a navigation-engine is constructed that directs the vehicle to search for any material similar to that which you seek, it creates a magnetic rabbit hole down which hundreds of millions of folk tumble daily. Artificial intelligence that takes advantage of human laziness or an inclination towards the path of least resistance, is the downside of this cyber genius. To what end this design? It's revolutionised scientific research. Commerce and entertainment have leapt inseparably aboard, reaping previously-unimagined riches. Perhaps the answer lies in the word predictability. If you can identify somebody's cyber-interests, you can predict what they might want – and serve up an unending diet of just that. Enter YouTube and youngsters hungry for knowledge – and instant-fix, easy entertainment. Here lies the rub. Watching hours of videos of a machine shredding anything from octopus tentacles to pencils, or a million ways to play with slime are not exactly enlightening, although they're not terribly damaging. Teenagers, whose parenting has steered them away from the Dark Web, proclaim its developmental dangers towards younger children here. One finger press mistake is all it takes… – Chris Bateman.Teens explain their YouTube obsession (Because adults don't get it).By Julie Jargon(The Wall Street Journal) – It's a question many adults have pondered: Why are kids so fascinated with YouTube? How can they watch a seemingly endless stream of slime-making how-tos, makeup tutorials and hydraulic-press videos? In search of the answers, I ventured to rural Texas to hear it straight from the mouths of teenagers themselves. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___.Why Lefors, a tiny town in the Texas Panhandle? It's the first stop on my tour around the country, to big cities and small towns, to listen to kids explain how they use technology and what they think of its role in shaping their lives. Instead of writing columns about what parents and experts think, in these instances I'm going to shut up and hear what they have to say.Read also: Who's creating top kids YouTube videos? – The Wall Street Journal.It turns out the teens in Lefors are like teens everywhere: They prefer YouTube to most other forms of digital entertainment.Common Sense Media on Tuesday released a survey of nearly 1,700 8- to 18-year-olds. One of the biggest changes in tweens' and teens' media habits over the last four years? The increase in time they spend watching videos on sites such as YouTube. Tweens and teens both spend nearly an hour every day watching videos, more than double the amount tweens reported in 2015 and an increase of 24 minutes a day among teens.Read also: Kids love YouTube and it's a problem for GoogleFor teens, watching online videos ranks second in enjoyment only to listening to music – it beat out videogames, television and social media. Nearly two-thirds of tweens and teens watch videos about how to make or do something they are interested in, Common Sense found.YouTube is the primary source of video entertainment for teens and tweens alike, beating out Netflix, Hulu, Twitch and other video sites by a long shot.I sat down with five teenagers to learn more about what they watch on YouTube, when and where they watch (in class and in bed), how it affects them and why they don't think they will be straying from it anytime soon.Watch the video to see what happened next.– For more WSJ Technology analysis, reviews, advice and headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The cyber rabbit hole – delivering unending ‘abundance’ – The Wall Street Journal

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