How to Block Slop Videos From Your Kid’s Netflix Queue
By Emily Palmer Heller, a Vulture editor covering family culture and games.
It started with Cocomelon. Netflix licensed the cheaply animated series back in 2020, craving the audience of impressionable kids and desperate parents that carried the brand to over 200 million YouTube subscribers. More kidslop — hyperstimulating shortform videos engineered to hook young brains and build the online empires of their creators — followed. Cocomelon producer Moonbug also licensed Little Baby Bum and Blippi to Netflix. Pinkfong, best known for foisting “Baby Shark” upon us, now produces original content for the streamer. Earlier this year, family YouTubers Salish & Jordan Matter joined Netflix with videos like “Sneaking Into an All Boys School” and “HOME ALONE Without Parents,” titles seemingly designed to send parenting forums and group chats spiraling.
When these deals were first inked, an explicit goal for these companies was to reach parents who didn’t allow their kids to watch YouTube. But what if, by flooding the algorithmic queue with low-quality content, there’s no longer much of a difference between the platforms? And how do you keep your kids from rotting their brains without cutting out TV altogether?
What many parents don’t know is that there is a way to block specific shows from showing up on your kids’ Netflix queues. (Personally, I’d rather have to listen to Ms. Rachel than Llama Llama.) Whenever this feature comes up in conversations with other parents, at least one person is surprised and grateful to learn about it.
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