YouTube's problem with kids

Videos targeted at children on YouTube are often filled with bizarre, hyperstimulating AI-generated content that is not always age-appropriate. These videos autoplay on endless, algorithmically curated streams punctuated by ads.

Maka launches today

Maka, a new streaming app for kids aged zero to six, launches today as an antidote to YouTube's problems.

Rejecting engagement machines

Maka cofounder and chief product officer Tanyella Leta says the platform is purposely abandoning the mechanisms that turn children's media into an engagement machine, rejecting the incentives that have warped kids' content.

“turn children's media into an engagement machine”

Kids were the afterthought

CEO and cofounder Isabel Sheinman says a lot of streamers were built to serve adults, not children.Maka was built with child development science and children's behavior first and foremost, setting a higher bar for quality.

“Kids were really the afterthought”

Twenty-five shows to start

Maka's programming slate is a mix of licensed content from global studios and independent creators. It features twenty-five shows in its curated catalog, including Franklin, The Wiggles, Pocoyo, Vida the Vet and Sesame Street.

Pricing and subscription

The platform runs on a subscription service, with a fifteen dollar monthly plan and a one hundred seven dollar annual plan. Sheinman and Leta became obsessed with redesigning kids' media during the Covid pandemic.

Expert evaluation framework

Every episode on Maka is evaluated by child development experts through Imprint, a framework created with researchers at the Yale Child Study Center.

AI slop is incoherent

AI-generated content has added a new wrinkle to kids' entertainment.Videos are incoherent, have no plot, or contain outright misinformation, but are packaged to look like learning.Some is disturbingly sexualized, featuring gore and other fetishes.

YouTube's low bar

Michael Robb, director of research at Common Sense Media, says YouTube has not done enough to distinguish educational content from slop.Not inappropriate is a very low bar.

“There's a big gulf between that and media created intentionally with kids in mind”

Pediatricians warn against AI

The American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidance this year, urging children to avoid AI-generated content, AI chatbots, short-form videos, and highly sensationalized content or clickbait. The guide prioritized quality content and coviewing with parents.

Maka's biggest challenge

Maka must compete with YouTube, which is free and already on devices in homes. The real test, says Robb, is whether Maka can grow with kids and stay sustainable without being pulled back toward the…

A different vision for screens

Leta says it does not have to feel like a race to the bottom of a child's brainstem.

“a race to the bottom of my kid's brainstem”