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Short abstract

Based on empirical research with families using YouTube Kids, this paper explores digital noise as informational waste. Repetitive, low-value videos generated by recommendation systems create a noisy media environment that families must constantly navigate and filter in everyday viewing practices.

Long abstract

This paper examines digital noise as a form of informational waste through ethnographic observations of everyday engagements with YouTube Kids. Although the platform is designed as a curated and safe environment for children, parents frequently describe encountering streams of repetitive, low-value videos that feel overwhelming and difficult to filter. During interviews and observation sessions conducted with families using YouTube Kids in domestic settings, participants repeatedly referred to this content as “noise”: videos that constantly demand attention yet provide little narrative or educational substance. The study combines ethnographic interviews with parents, observation of children’s viewing practices, and discussions with small-scale content creators who produce videos for the platform. These encounters reveal how families actively navigate algorithmically generated streams like skipping, blocking, or redirecting content, while creators describe experimenting with small variations of similar videos in response to shifting recommendation metrics.

Rather than treating digital waste as a downstream effect of discarded devices or obsolete infrastructures, the paper shows how informational waste emerges upstream through algorithmic systems that incentivise continuous production and micro-variation. The resulting accumulation of repetitive videos produces a noisy viewing environment that families must constantly manage.

Keywords

digital noise, informational waste, algorithmic recommendation, platform economies, attention economies