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In less than five years, the young American Youtubeur Ryan Kaji has attracted more than 30 million subscribers to his YouTube channel and now generates more than $ 20 million a year.
Riding on his airplane-shaped buoy or a water pistol in his hand, Ryan Kaji teaches you how tsunamis are formed. Now 8 years old, this young American has become extremely famous with his YouTube videos. His channel, in which he regularly stages himself alongside his parents, grossed $ 26 million in 2019, according to Forbes magazine .
A success that earned him first place in the magazine's Youtubers ranking for the second consecutive year (22 million in 2018). It was by doing " unboxing ", a video format that consists of staging by opening gifts, that the child began to attract millions of spectators on his channel " Ryan's World ". Today, more than 23 million people follow him on YouTube.
A family business
In 2015, when the boy's parents, his real name Ryan Guan, launched the "Ryan's World" chain, the main interested party was only 3 years old. Originally called "Ryan Toysreview", the YouTube account only aims to show him unwrapping gifts and having fun with it. For example, in a video published in July 2015 and viewed more than a billion times, we can see the little boy unwrapping a gift and playing with the dozens of miniature cars that come out of it.
Little by little, after having built an empire on YouTube, it is with its notoriety that the pitfalls come. Targeted by a consumer defense association that criticizes it for not reporting content sponsored by brands, the chain must change following a seizure by the United States Federal Agency for Trade Regulation (FTC) on it. It was after this episode that the name evolved and that the content offered was mainly educational videos.
Bolstered by its staggering gains and growing popularity, the chain is diversifying. Today, in addition to the millions of dollars collected via YouTube, a whole range of derivative products such as toys and clothing are on sale in certain large chains. The young boy also made a place for himself on the small screen through a program broadcast on the American channel Nickelodeon.
The global rise of children on YouTube
The Youtubeur children who gather millions of subscribers are not only American. In France too, they are very popular with Internet users. According to a study published by the Pew Research Center last July, videos published on the Google platform depicting a child under the age of 13 are watched " almost three times more than other types of videos ".
The creation of channels featuring children is an idea of parents, as is the case for the young American Ryan. A parental decision that makes many specialists doubt that it does not necessarily respect the wishes of the child.
“ The first question to ask is actually what are these parents looking for ? It seems that they use the attractive image of the children, (…) to be seen them. It is the parents who have the ideas and who stage them, the children are too young to give their opinion, to oppose and are on stage facing the camera ", explains Marion Haza, psychologist and lecturer at University of Poitiers at OPEN (Observatory of parenthood and digital education).
According to her, the children " are caught in parental desires " and " are not considered as children ". Except that today, “ the images remain and are broadcast all over the world at high speed. This flow is impossible to stop. These images will therefore always remain associated with these children, ”warns the expert, who questions the effect that these images could have on the star's future.
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