LogFAQs > #906615795

Zeus posted...

Children growing up today are most likely going to view and engage in much of the same content as their peers.

Arguable. Yes, small scale peer groups will certainly exist (and always have - when I was a kid, I talked my friends into watching Doctor Who, at a time when the average American kid didn't give a shit about Doctor Who), but that doesn't necessarily extend to the population as a whole. What a group of kids in one school clique up and watch as a peer group that can discuss and share content won't necessarily be what kids in another school, another state, or on a different coast are latching on to.

Yes, there will still be overlapping clusters - and like I mentioned, content itself is currently starting to create cultures around itself wherein diffusion can still occur (ie, people watching Critical Role and hanging out on the Reddit might mention how they also enjoy other online D&D games like Dice Camera Action or High Rollers and encourage others to check them out as well), but ultimately we're likely to reach a point where any given piece of content never has more than a tiny fragment of the total potential audience even aware of it, let alone a large enough fan to fully engage in it.



Zeus posted...

For starters, there's less overall content available -- because the vast majority of entertainment is geared towards adults

The dozens of channels on my FiOS, the hundreds of shows available on services like Netflix, and the millions of videos available on YouTube (even if you only limit it to YouTube Kids) would seem to disagree with you.

At least, compared to the seven or show channels I had as a kid, none of which were 24 hours (not even Nickelodeon), and most of which only really had a few hours of total content available in a given week.

Or the three channels that my parents had, which maybe had a total of 10 hours of kid-centric content in any given week (at best).

And again, that doesn't even get into video games. When my niece is playing Minecraft, my nephew is playing Smite, or my friend's daughter is playing Mario Kart, those are hours spent interacting with media other than TV.



Zeus posted...

They also have greatly diminished access to alternative media sources (because they rely on adults).

Every child I've known of for years almost always has their own TV. Most of them are fully allowed to use On Demand or Netflix-type services in a family room (so their parents CAN occasionally check in and see what they're watching), and most of them have access to either tablets or phones that allow them to watch whatever online content they want (even if they're limited to YouTube Kids or some other kid-friendly monitoring software).

Almost none of them get sit down and told what to watch by their parents, nor do their parents limit them to content or a schedule even remotely restrict their access to the levels I experienced as a kid simply because the content wasn't available in the first place.


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