Interaction of Children Aged 4 to 10 Years With YouTube Videos Played on a Smartphone

Children are keen users of digital technologies, and we studied the interaction of 60 children aged 4 to 10 years with YouTube videos played on a smartphone. We found that the 9- and 10-year-old children liked watching videos on a smartphone, while the younger ones preferred TV shows. Most of the children aged 4 to 6 years made accidental touches on the screen of the smartphone while watching a video on it, and such accidental touches sometimes paused or closed the video. Most children aged 7 years and more could use the voice search feature of YouTube to look for a specified video, use the different widgets of the website, and even skip through advertisement. The average attention span of the children while watching videos on a smartphone increased from 3 to 9 min between 4 and 10 years of age. We recommend videos meant for children have content to facilitate informal learning and nurture creativity in them, be of appropriate length, and avoid small objects and crowded scenes. Video streaming websites should have a “child mode” with a minimalistic user interface and support for voice-based interaction.