The Pervasive Vice of Passivity, by Rob Marco

When my wife and I were young parents trying to survive the days of toddlerdom, we made a gross misstep. We had YouTube on the TV, and our kids discovered a channel called “Ryan ToysReview” which was essentially a three-year-old boy named Ryan “unboxing” and playing with toys on camera. I felt instant revulsion at both the kid and the whole schtick, but my kids were transfixed. I’d like to think we were alone as young parents in accepting scraps of respite in such a way, but I doubt it. Ryan Kaji’s channels have surpassed 67 billion (with a “b”) views on YouTube and have earned the boy and his parents over $25 million from merchandise sales.

My sense of revulsion came from the seemingly ludicrous logic: my kids would rather watch some kid on the Internet play with toys than play with toys themselves. It’s not like playing (playing!) with toys was hard work. It was supposed to be fun. So why was this Internet kid who was robbing them of that joy so popular? ….

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