YouTube: Usage and Abusage

Project for Rockbrook Park School 4th Year Class

 

YouTube is probably one of the most popular websites among young people.
It can be source of tremendous fun (watching videos of all kinds) and it can also be a source of interesting and useful information.

However, like in most other areas of the Internet, there can be a dark and harmful side to YouTube: some of the video content in the site is not appropriate for minors (some is not appropriate for adults either, but that is another day’s work), and yet the barriers for gaining access to this ‘adult’ material are far too easy to overcome.

The purpose of this project is to explore to what extent under-age people gain access to videos in YouTube classified as for ‘over-18s’, and to try to make recommendations for limiting access to adult videos to the appropriate age bearer.

The project will consist of the following outcomes:

1. design a questionnaire to explore under-18s’ use of YouTube;
2. carry out a quantitative survey (over 1000 respondents) in Primary and Secondary schools across the country, based on that questionnaire;
3. carry out a qualitative survey (15-20 people) to ascertain attitudes and behavioural patterns regarding YouTube;
4. analyse the results of the surveys;
5. publish the results of the surveys in an attractive and eye-catching fashion;
6. derive recommendations from the survey findings regarding age-verification mechanisms and other safety measures (including those affecting parents and carers) to prevent minors gaining access to over-18s videos on YouTube

 

The most significant outcome for the project would be solving the problem of minors gaining access to unsuitable videos. It would require figuring out some way of verifying the age of the person trying to access the video/site. Age-verification is one of the greatest challenges facing the Internet industry and the relevant stakeholders (young users, parents & teachers, media, government & law enforcement). It would be really fantastic if out of this project the Team could make some serious recommendations regarding the age-verification problem.

The project will require a certain level of understanding of social research procedures. The 4th Year students have already engaged in several sessions with a specialist social researcher from DIT Media Studies before undertaking the tasks listed above.

The students will make use of specialised survey software for gathering the data from the questionnaires and analysing this data. The software that has been chosen for the project is: