There are two types of parents I’m friends with: those who let their kids watch YouTube and those who work very hard to keep their kids off YouTube as much as possible. Having known at least one young child who developed an obsession with dictators after bypassing YouTube parental controls, I understand the divide. Streaming services also seem to understand this divide and are eager to offer an alternative to YouTube that gives parents the usual appeal of YouTube, hopefully without the questions about Kim Jong Un’s rise to power.
Paramount Plus, with its massive library of Nickelodeon shows, is a little more prepared than other streamers that had to build a library of kids’ content from scratch. In a conversation on Zoom, Dan Reich, executive vice president and global head of product and design for Paramount Plus, told me that this is the second-biggest content draw for the platform, which is a big reason the streaming service is right now I have revised the entire children’s experience. The company wants it to be a “simple, fun place tailored to the demo.”
Reich and Paramount Plus wanted to make the streaming service a safer place for children, so it’s now easier to set up children’s profiles. When you add a new profile, there is now a Kids Mode toggle and an option for younger kids rated for TV-Y and adult content, and an option for older kids rated for PG content. Reich quickly determined that the profiles would not collect any personal information about the children. That means a lot less personalization, but hopefully also fewer recommendations that may not be appropriate.
Instead, personalization will be user-driven, which is a fancy way of saying and relies on traditional streaming UI tricks like suggesting that they continue watching a show they had to pause for homework or suggesting that to watch something again – something most children rarely need to be asked to do. (I watched once Monsters vs. Aliens At least six times at a wedding abroad with my nephew. That was far too often.) But personalization will also largely be reserved for older children—think ages seven to twelve. Younger children (Reich mentioned ages two to six) will have a different experience with large symbols and few words, which makes sense, because that’s about the age when you actually learn to read and write.
In addition to easier profile creation, the landing page for children’s content has also received a major update and features a large carousel similar to the one in the adult version of Paramount Plus. Reich found that the carousel also works – with a 17 percent improvement in playback rate. And if you’re worried that Paramount Plus is babysitting one child too much, Reich was also quick to point out that autoplay is automatically turned off on children’s profiles.
These changes have already been available in the Paramount Plus app since April 22, but in our conversation Reich mentioned some other changes that will be rolled out to the platform later, including the ability to use generative AI to create playlists of content and artwork for Children to use as well as a new profile creation prompt, which is expected to be released in the second quarter.
And these are all good things! Before streaming dominated content consumption, children’s content was pretty well organized into channels and time blocks tailored specifically to them. That was the whole point of Nickelodeon for decades. This meant that kids got exactly what they wanted to see (and that’s what the network censors deemed appropriate), and that adults didn’t have to wade through a ton of kids’ content to figure out what they wanted to watch.
As a Paramount Plus user, I’ve definitely noticed that I get far fewer recommendations for children’s content than on Netflix and Disney Plus – both of which assume there’s a child living in my house just because I get mopey sometimes and they look at me again She-Ra and the Princesses of Power or Beauty and the Beast. When I watched it again The Legend of KorraParamount Plus suggested I watch it again Avatar: The Last Airbender or the very violent and adult ones Ark: The Animated Series instead of something like Dora the Explorer. It was a nice experience that the platform understood that I was an adult who liked cartoons and didn’t just assume that cartoons equaled babies.
And as streaming continues to displace cable as the way we watch content, other streaming services will need to think more carefully about how they present and separate that content. So far it looks like Paramount Plus might give them a good plan.