A new TV and children’s personalities development
The Digital revolution has brought us to a disruptive moment, in which technology and the internet have become essential factors on human experience. Within this context, due to its free access and unparalleled audiovisual library, YouTube has replaced television in children’s imaginary. Unlike traditional TV shows or films, however, YouTube fosters a participatory culture in which users, adults and children alike, assume the roles of consumers, critics and content creators. According to its terms of service, YouTube is not an audiovisual service, but rather a sharing platform, that enables professional media to host their production as well as allows ordinary users to exhibit their personal lives and interact with their audiences. Broadcast yourself, said YouTube early motto.
Acknowledging, therefore, that influencers and youtubers have become key cultural figures, on A Nova TV (The New TV) we aim to examine the exposure of children’s private lives as a source of audiovisual entertainment aimed at other children, searching for effective regulatory safeguards for young audiences. The research was inspired by changes observed in children’s behaviour and self-perception brought about by interactions in digital environments, particularly as a viewer of YouTube videos featuring children performing everyday activities. Through this concern with the not-so-free development of children’s personalities in the digital age, the book explores how this phenomenon arises from digital platforms’ business model, which rely heavily on personal data treatment for consumers profiling and the erosion of privacy.
YouTube channels featuring children were preceded by sharenting, a neologism that describes parents’ widespread habit of sharing pictures, stories and videos of their children – specially at younger ages – on social media such as Facebook, Instagram and, more recently, TikTok. We argue that sharenting already jeopardizes to some extent the balance between parental freedom and duty of care, often leaning towards instrumentalization of children. Yet the exploitation of children goes even further on YouTube, as it has become not only an interactional habit among users but a profitable form of commercial entertainment targeting young audiences, particularly in Brazil, YouTube’s third largest market behind only India and the United States. In Brazil, according to Google itself, YouTube has become a national preference. In that sense, an important national annual research called TicKids Online Brasil, conducted by CGI.br – Brazilian Internet Steering Committee -, estimates that about eighty-percent of children between nine and seventeen years of age watch YouTube and influencers videos on a daily basis.
As noted first by communication scholars, child influencers promote a form of performative exhibitionism, selling lifestyles for emulation while cultivating a sense of intimacy between influencers and viewers. YouTube, in its turn, stimulates this kind of content creation, providing information, tools and rewards for users to exhibit themselves. Nonetheless, the platform portrays itself as a mere sharing service and its terms of service prioritize shielding it from liability rather than protecting vulnerable audiences.
Digital Constitutionalism, child protection and age-based content rating system
The research aligned itself with Digital Constitutionalism according to Edoardo Celeste, i.e., comprehended as an orientation that seeks to translate fundamental rights to the digital era and that proposes integrating national, transnational, and informal mechanisms of internet governance while rejecting libertarian approaches to digital environments. Therefore, we believe that constitutional counterreactions to such complex social phenomena, especially regarding the multifaceted right to free development of children’s personality, emerge in fragmented and polycentric ways.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 25 consolidates, within the digital environment, a century of international instruments targeted at the protection of childhood and the progressive development of children. Although it does not establish concrete measures, it sets out clear guidelines that reach the problem at hand: it urges States to diversify legislative, administrative and other instruments aimed at safeguarding children in the digital environment; reaffirms that the primary protection of the best interests of the child is a shared duty, i.e., a responsibility held not only by the family, but also by State and society alike. It also asserts the need to protect children from the content disseminated on digital platforms through continuous improvement of age-appropriate mechanisms.
In Brazil, multiple instruments aim to protect children online, most notably, the recent Digital Child and Adolescent Statute, enacted last September, that was mobilized by many children’s rights institutions. It creates mandatory age verification mechanisms, strengthens parental controls, prohibits profiling of children for advertising purposes, establishes faster reporting tools and imposes financial sanctions on platforms for harmful practices. Likewise, the National Council for Children’s Rights (CONANDA) issued guidelines for a National Children and Adolescent’s Rights Protection in Digital Environments Policy, aiming to promote a healthy and age-appropriate use of digital services.
Brazil also maintains a long-standing age-based content rating system, known as Classificação Indicativa, which rates audiovisual works based on their possible effects on children’s behavior and employs visual alerts to do so. Recently, its regulation has been updated. As a result, digital platforms in themselves will be subject to age-based rating and a new category regarding early childhood was finally established. The preceding systems jumped from content recommended for all audiences directly to unsuitable for children ten years of age and under.
Those advances are extremely positive, given that platforms such as YouTube struggle to prevent through its human and algorithmic filters inappropriate content from reaching young viewers. Nonetheless, we find it problematic that this new and important audiovisual rating system still excludes from its scope user-generated content, i.e., the dominant category of videos uploaded on YouTube.
Thus, while Brazilian authorities and civil society’ regulatory initiatives increasingly target digital platforms and their business model, YouTube is still being treated as a platform for user interaction rather than also as a massive audiovisual media ecosystem, even though it has become the new TV for children by featuring mainly user-generated content.
The need to apply the age-based rating system to YouTube content, an issue with consent and regulating influencers’ activity
Given this context, we argue that the public age-based rating mechanism must also apply to YouTube content in itself, at least to its most prominent videos and channels, and not only to the platform as a system. Although it may be impossible to classify every single video uploaded by platform’s users, given hundreds of hours of content are posted every minute on YouTube alone, we defend that a fundamental public policy aimed at protecting children’s development should not overlook audiovisual content consumed by millions of children simply because it originates from users rather than professional media outlets. YouTube’s own popularity metrics — views, subscriptions and audience reach — could serve as criteria for subjecting its most popular content to age-appropriate classification.
The book also questions the excessive reliance on consent as a regulatory cornerstone. We believe that overemphasizing parental control shifts a disproportionate burden onto families to safeguard their children in digital environments, while enabling platforms to evade accountability. Although it is important to provide parental control mechanisms, this should not lessen corporate responsibility, since YouTube not only stimulates user-generated content, as it explores its diffusion.
We also further engage, in the book, with the broader debate on regulating digital influencer activity as an indirect way to protect the audience, drawing on examples such as French legislation that classifies child commercial influencers as children engaged in artistic work, subject to a special labour regime rather than considering it mere fun and games, while examining how these discussions can inform regulatory frameworks tailored to the Brazilian context.
Ultimately, The New TV seeks pathways to translate children’s right to the free development of their personalities into the digital ecosystem, in which parents, academics and society at large are confronted with unprecedented forms of influence and power concentration.
Suggested citation:
Pedro Corrêa Pertence, ‘The New TV:
YouTube and children’s (not so) free personalities development in the digital age’ (Comparative Digital Law Blog, 07 January 2026) <https://lawandtech.ie/the-new-tv-youtube-and-childrens-not-so-free-personalities-development-in-the-digital-age>.
About the author:
Pedro Corrêa Pertence is a Brazilian Lawyer, has a Master’s degree on Constitutional Law with Instituto Brasileiro de Ensino, Desenvolvimento e Pesquisa – IDP. Founding partner at Rossi Pertence Lima Advogados.
