Six Popular YouTube Channels Parents Can Trust

Shallow and manipulative influencers, the toxic culture of materialism and vanity, vulgarity, pranks, and violence have earned YouTube a mixed reputation when it comes to acting in the best interest of young users. Parents talk of wanting to ban it, but they also recognize the benefits it can have on their kids. Plus, kids LOVE it! Beyond the questionable content, the platform offers opportunities for creativity, education, socialization, and entertainment that is safe for young audiences. Many popular influencers create content with their younger audience in mind, censoring their language and actively selecting appropriate topics. Join us in this exploration of some child-and-teen-friendly YouTube creators and their potential to inspire children to explore the world beyond their screens.

YouTube as a Source of Educational Inspiration

With channels featuring art, technology, beauty, music, or the environment, YouTube offers millions of opportunities to explore. Many online communities have gained popularity over the last few years, including those centered around makeup, comedy, cooking, DIY projects, dance, and video games. Shows like Bill Nye the Science Guy and Sesame Street produce videos to educate children about the wonders of the world. Many even inspire kids to explore their interests and experience the potential in the offscreen world around them.

If you haven’t yet allowed your kids access to a browser or haven’t yet put solid safe screen parameters in place, Dr. B is here to help. For help with home setup and sensible rules, you’ll love our GKIS Connected Family Course. For tech tool tips and referrals, our GKIS Screen Safety Toolkit is the course you need. If online courses are still new to you or you just can’t find the time to take one, Dr. B also offers one-to-one coaching for effortless implementation. At the click of a button, she can set up a video or phone call to help you get started. You’re not in this alone anymore. GKIS and Dr B are here to help.

Child-Friendly YouTube Influencers Your Whole Family Can Enjoy

Baking on YouTube

Like the Food Network, a large food-focused community on YouTube has become popular. One popular creator in this community is YouTuber Rosanna Pansino, a creator known for her baking videos. With over 11 million subscribers, Rosanna has the largest baking channel on YouTube and rose to fame with her recipes for making baked goods with various themes based on pop culture. Rosanna has a charming, energetic, and bubbly personality, and provides detailed instructions for her videos. Her content is classified as safe for children and teens. She does not use inappropriate language and is transparent about advertised products that sponsor her content.

Beauty on YouTube

In the beauty community, makeup artist Tati Westbrook is well known for her makeup looks and makeup reviews. Westbrook’s channel, with over 9 million subscribers, publishes videos mainly reviewing various makeup brands and products. Tati has a calm, soft personality and gives detailed and honest reviews and recommendations on the products she discusses. Tati makes sure to put disclaimers in her videos if a personal bias is present in reviews to be as transparent as she can to her viewers. Her content is suggested for older viewers, as there may occasionally be language and topics not suited for young children. Westbrook does promote her personal brand of beauty and wellness products on her channel.

Education through YouTube

In the educational community, the YouTube channel Crash Course, with over 10 million subscribers, has been used by students and teachers as an educational aid to learning different academic subjects. This channel, created by brothers John and Hank Green, produces videos covering various topics in subjects such as math, science, history, psychology, chemistry, and more. Videos are designed to be entertaining and educational and to help new learners better understand the subjects covered. Due to the topics they cover, some of the videos could discuss sexual or violent information not suitable for all ages.

Sports and Humor

YouTube team Dude Perfect, with almost 50 million subscribers, are best known for trick shot videos, or videos where they attempt challenging sports moves that require significant skill and luck to achieve. We at GKIS love how they inspire children to go play outside to reproduce incredible sports tricks of their own. We didn’t see evidence of inappropriate language, and they appear to disclose which of their videos are sponsored.

Gaming and Education

The Game Theorists YouTube channel is unique for creating content discussing different video game theories using research and reasoning. The creator of this channel, who goes by MatPat, has gained over 12 million subscribers by discussing his video game theories using humorous narrations, quality graphics, and his energetic and animated personality. Many of the games covered are popular among kids, such as Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy’s, Pokémon, and Super Mario Brothers. This creator does occasionally use offensive language. Also, some of the games covered by this channel may have violent and frightening plots not suitable for children. This channel appears to disclose which content is sponsored.

Wilderness Survival on YouTube

YouTube channel Primitive Technology produces videos on how to build in nature for survival without utilizing modern technology. This channel, with over 10 million subscribers, is unique in the sense that it does not provide verbal narration. All instructions and commentary are provided in the closed captions of the video. The videos on this channel are characterized by still frames showing the environment around the creator, with audio of calm nature sounds. The closed captions give detailed descriptions of the materials used, such as the different plant species shown in videos, and give easy instructions for how to build the materials shown. Given that there is no narration in these videos, there is no explicit language or content on this channel. There are currently no identified sponsors, only advertisements for the creator’s book shown after videos.

Dr. Bennett’s Current Fav YouTube Channel

When I presented my idea for this article to our GKIS intern team, Dr. Bennett raved about her current favorite YouTube channel Liziqi. With over 8.96 million subscribers, this 29-year-old Chinese YouTube celebrity is known for creating fascinating food and handicraft preparation videos. Beautifully shot to soothing music, incredibly hardworking and talented Liziqi can be viewed wandering gracefully through the forests and countryside of Pingwu, Mianyang, Sichuan planting and harvesting corn, rice, and cotton (among other things), making handicrafts like colorful weaved clothing and baskets, and creating expertly staged traditional Chinese food. Once you get started watching, it’s easy to be mesmerized.

Although we are excited to share our awesome child-friendly YouTube finds, many of these creators have hours of videos that we did not sample. Please watch and decide for yourself the appropriateness of the creators on this list for your unique child.

How Can You Select and Curate Content for Your Child?

To further protect your child against harmful videos, especially for young children, consider downloading the YouTube Kids app. This version of YouTube was created to show the most family-friendly content offered on YouTube [i]. The app allows parents to have more control over what kind of videos they want to be suggested to their child and gives more options to block certain videos, creators, turn off the search options, and more to protect your child from inappropriate content [1].

If you decide to continue using the regular YouTube app, there are certain settings that can help protect your child from harmful content. In YouTube’s settings, there is a “Restricted Mode” option, which helps hide inappropriate content flagged by users [2]. You can also turn off the “Search” option for YouTube so your child cannot search for inappropriate videos, and can only view content suggested to them or posted by creators they have subscribed to.

With a little time, cooperation, and creativity, you too can explore and discover family-friendly YouTube channels to share. While there are good reasons to be vigilant of the dangers of YouTube, it’s important to remember the positive aspects too.

Thanks to Alexandra Rosas-Ruiz for her research and help with writing this article. Along with the creators listed above, there are many new creators and communities rising to fame on YouTube. Want to know what makes them so popular? Check out GKIS article, “Why Are YouTube Celebrities So Popular?”