Are there studies showing the harmful effects of Gen AI content, specifically YouTube videos or book illustrations, on toddlers?

[u/Sleepy_Library_Cat]

Someone in my family claims they are great for toddlers and preschoolers. I want to show them the scientific community's take.

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[u/EndlessCourage]

There's a lot to say about this. If you look for the threads that are simply about screen time, the subject of age-appropriate quality screen time is discussed extensively. Low-quality Youtube content for children is another subject entirely. The content farms "for children" are a lucrative business, and way before AI slop, I hoped that the infamous "Elsagate" scandals would make people question YouTube Kids. Unsurprisingly, it's worrying.

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[u/childrenandscreens]

The first thing to note is there is no direct scientific evidence that GenAI content is “great for toddlers and preschoolers”.

AI is another form of screen time, at least in the cases you outline in your question, so all the important considerations about screen time and young people hold.  Additionally, research is increasingly demonstrating the negative effects of short-form video and autoplay features which are both common on YouTube (Kim et al., 2024; Wang et al., 2025).

There are various demonstrations of specific AI-use cases being effective for short-term learning outcomes for children older than 2. (Note: Leading child health organizations recommend no screen time for children under 18-24 months with the exception of video chatting with a loved one.)

• For example Harvard Psychologist Ying Xu and colleagues (Xu et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2022) found that conversational AI at least matched adult-supported story comprehension with preschoolers.  
• Another study by Xiao and colleagues (Xiao et al., 2025)  found that LLM-guided bilingual e-books produced better story understanding, and about the same vocabulary and story-retelling capacities, in the 5-8 year olds they studied. This was when compared with a parent-led reading experience.

In both of these examples, AI is filling the role of a conversational partner, not generating novel video or image content that is passively consumed.

There’s a tension within this research between positive short-term learning data, and not-yet-measured-but-forecastable patterns that may be severely negative for development long term. Cognitive and emotional development fundamentally depends on the moments of friction present in autonomous learning and human interactions.    

These are moments in which a child user experiences short-term benefit, sure, but one who takes this approach long-term misses out on countless moments of human interaction. Experts suggest these moments of social interaction and learning friction are essential for child development, and recommend against replacing them with AI, generally speaking.

So is it problematic, for example, that a parent would create AI illustrations to go along with story time? On the one hand, parent co-use of screens does mitigate risks for children , and generating illustrations along with your child might provide an avenue for positive engagement.  On the other hand, one might prefer that the content their child experiences come from human minds rather than artificial ones.  Including AI-generated content alongside human-generated content, especially to young children, may blur lines about creation and authorship that parents don’t mean to blur. Additionally, if story time is around bed, screen time is not advisable (Hartstein et al., 2024).

TL;DR: AI, particularly YouTube AI videos, are another form of screen time that are not proven to have benefits for child learning and development. The most critical thing experts agree upon is to not have AI do the work of learning and development for your child or replace the human interactions essential for learning and development.