A recent analysis found that videos on YouTube that feature or target children under the age of 13 are the most successful.
The Pew Research Center analyzed videos published by 43,770 channels on YouTube during the first week of January this year. Each channel chosen for the study has more than 250,000 subscribers.
In total, all channels involve in the study produced 48,486 hours of content. Together, these videos raked in over 14.2 billion seven days after they were uploaded on YouTube.
Videos With Children Are Popular Among Viewers
According to the analysis, videos that feature children under the age of 13 had three times as many views on average as other content on the platform. Videos that were aimed at young viewers were also highly popular.
The small number of videos that both feature children and aimed at children were "more popular than any other type of content identified in this analysis."
The findings come a week after Google, the parent company of YouTube, reportedly reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over alleged violations of children's data privacy laws.
Earlier this year, a report by Wired revealed that pedophiles use the comments section of videos that feature children to lure other predators and exchange contact information with the promise to share similar videos via WhatsApp or Kik.
YouTube is not intended for children under the age of 13. For young viewers and streamers, there is a dedicated platform called YouTube Kids that offers enhanced parental controls.
Pew's Other Findings
Pew considered videos published on YouTube as a whole for the analysis. The analysis also found that 18 percent of the English-language videos published on YouTube during the first week of January was related to gaming. Gaming videos are also often longer than any other kind of content found on the platform.
Of these videos, those that have the words "Fortnite", "prank," or "worst" had as much as five times more views than others.
Meanwhile, politics and current events make up 16 percent of all English-language videos on the platform. Most videos, however, focus on international affairs rather than just the United States.
Of the videos that do focus on American politics and current events, 36 percent mentioned the words "president" and "Trump" in the title. Putting "Trump" in the video title is associated with an increase in median views, according to Pew.
