Digital Disguise: Spiritual and Psychological Review of Programs Targeting Children

Camille McDaniel (00:09.278)
Welcome back to another episode of Christ in Private Practice. It is great to have you here. I was really excited about this episode, probably just because of my shock. That was probably a lot of what like really led me to be like, I am definitely going to record something about this. This might be something that others didn’t know about. I know I didn’t know about it. And so

Let’s kind of like dive in because I know I’m talking all around it and I haven’t gotten to it yet. But if you have worked with children, if you have your own children, smaller children, probably this would pertain to in some cases. But for older children, there are things that we’re going to need to work out as well.

But if you have any children that you work with or any children of your own, whatever settings that you work in, then you are probably familiar with the fact that they get on YouTube Kids. Now, you know that YouTube Kids is supposed to be the kid-friendly version of YouTube. They have streaming shows, they have games on there, you know, they have a lot of different things that are supposed to be.

you know, a part of a child’s world to enhance their worlds educationally or entertainment wise, right? Okay. Now, while some of the content is wholesome and even educational, there’s a darker side. There is a darker side that many parents and even counselors are missing.

So today we are going to get to talking about some of these shows that they are designed to look friendly and harmless. They are actually what I refer to as a Trojan horse. Matter of fact, when I was having conversation with my own children, I referred to it as a Trojan horse and explained to them what that was because, you know, they’re creeping in these shows, some of these games.

Camille McDaniel (02:15.648)
are creeping into our children’s hearts, into their minds, and they are disguised as cute animations and they’re bright and they have these fun colors and they’re bubbly or they’re cutesy or they’re adorable and right so we’re going to talk about the mental and the emotional, the behavioral and the spiritual impact because

Some of these things are straight demonic and I am not trying to even stretch that. I know sometimes people are like, oh my gosh, everything is demonic. No, uh-uh, uh-uh. You’re going to find out when we talk about this and when you go and do a little bit of research yourself. And this might even lead you to maybe ask a few more questions when you are assessing children.

in your initial intake to find out what they are ingesting, what kind of shows they are participating in, not just asking them what they like to do. But we might dig a little bit more just to find out if there’s some additional things going on presenting as a Trojan horse. So let’s get started with what I mean by a Trojan horse. And so if you hadn’t heard the Greek story before, then I’m just going to go ahead and I’ll

you know, kind of share it real quick. So all of that makes sense. But the term comes from a Greek story that I think I’ve heard it in school. So the Greeks built this humongous wooden horse and they gave it to the city of Troy as a gift. I’m doing air quotes, quote unquote, as a gift. And so the Trojans actually took the gift

brought it into their city limits, right? So they were able to take the gift past the gate with the armed guards and all of the protection and they brought it past them thinking it was just a gift. How wonderful, how kind. And they brought it into their city limits but within this humongous wooden horse were hiding Greek soldiers. And the soldiers came out at night and they attacked

Camille McDaniel (04:39.31)
packed the city from within the city limits, within the city walls, within the walls of protection. And that’s exactly how some of our kids you know shows the shows that the kids are watching on this channel, that’s how it’s working today because the titles sound adorable and bubbly and kid-like. I mean honestly as a parent you wouldn’t even bat your eye. You’re like okay yeah.

Sounds like some little kiddie show. All right, go watch your kiddie show. Have a good time. That’s wonderful. You can’t tell by the thumbnail. The thumbnail looks very friendly. Might even have like little toys in the in the thumbnail like of the video or little like characters that look like stuffed animals or just cute little animations, honestly. But once your child actually clicks,

and then starts watching for a little bit. Notice I say and then starts watching for a little bit because sometimes what is really tricky is that in the initial few seconds that it’s playing, it still really is unassuming and then after that it starts to switch and then the real content comes through and that is oftentimes violent and it’s disturbing and it’s aggressive and it is spiritually dark.

Okay? And the danger is that the Trojan horse shows kind of bypass our guard rails, you know, our protective guard rails. So your parent sees it as friendly because they see an image that looks really kid-like and you know on the YouTube kids channel.

And the label seems fine, because the label’s all cartoony and animated, and you’re just like, oh, okay, that’s fine. But there’s a dark message inside. And that even in itself is kind of, you know, a little problematic because the parents don’t notice, because it’s unassuming. And then when the child is asking permission and say, can I watch this one? And the parents like, yeah, sure, go ahead. So now I’m getting the okay.

Camille McDaniel (06:58.156)
So then my parent thinks this is fine but my parent actually doesn’t know what content I’m ingesting, right? So I want to just break down real quick how this can affect our children from just different angles. So that as mental health professionals we can just be aware and for any of us who are parents or grandparents or aunties and uncles, we can also be aware and we can inform those who may not be aware and for us to look out

for additional things that you know that they are watching to make sure that we are fully aware. I know it takes a little bit of time and for some parents they are they are super busy and on the go but this is something that really kind of can’t be skipped. So as it relates to like you know mentally and emotionally the kids can develop anxiety.

I had a colleague who just actually posted, and I don’t know if he said the Washington, like he posted the article. I can’t remember if it was like the Washington Post actually reported on this, which newspaper it was, but they were showing increased anxiety levels in children and teenagers from the amount of social media that they happen to be ingesting. And it’s probably related to certain types of social media that they are also ingesting. I would have to actually go back.

and find that article that he posted. But kids can develop anxiety and they are. Kids are developing nightmares and even obsessive thoughts from just this ongoing repeated exposure to disturbing content. It is also desensitizing kids to violence. It’s normalizing things that are really creepy. I’m gonna go over a list because there are a few.

ones that I already saw like they even entered into my household and it just so happens that it just so happened that there was something that happened in with one of the kids, I can’t remember whatever it was I had them like copy this particular well my older because the other one was too little to read so but

Camille McDaniel (09:09.432)
had him copy a scripture and then we were going to be talking about the scripture as it related to whatever choice he made. And then we, whatever it was, it started to talk, we started talking about how the Lord has us to think on things that are right and that are good. And then why does the Father have us wanting to focus on things that are above, that are.

of him and versus, you know, things that are of darkness. And then somehow that got me to using the example of the Trojan horse, which then got my child to say to me, I know an example, because my child loves to teach, loves to educate a person, loves to teach. My child said, I know an example of a Trojan horse, like this show. And I was like, what show?

And so he named the show and the character, like one of the characters names is Huggy Wuggy. Now let’s stop right there. Huggy Wuggy. How can that sound evil? In any way, that sound? No, it doesn’t. Huggy Wuggy, come on. It sounds as childlike as childlike can be. But anyway, so he starts to tell me about all the rest of the little characters that go along with Huggy Wuggy. And I was like, my goodness.

You got people who’ve had like the, from the torso down, they’re ripped off. So they’re only half a, half a, I guess an animation. I mean, they’re supposed to be basically little stuffed animals that were tortured and abused who now can’t escape some factory. And they got all these cutesy names, even some teacher that’s supposed to teach them, but the teacher is demented and does violent things. It is a mess.

a hot mess. So thankfully when he said I know and then after that I’m like okay let me see more then we had a whole other lesson then we had a whole other lesson about how absolutely that is a Trojan horse absolutely that does not go along with the scriptures.

Camille McDaniel (11:21.038)
and why and how it might change us and change our thinking and how we can then find ourselves changing and who we’re supposed to be. We just went and had a really good conversation, but I’m like, I just was, I felt upset that people are now going to this level to try to trick parents to bypass the parent safeguard. And, or if it’s parent or guardian, whomever, right? To bypass the safeguards.

to be able to get straight to the kids. And because we live in a time where people have children absorbing social media without much supervision, the amount of the stuff that kids are ingesting, is beyond alarming, I’m sure, it’s beyond alarming. So as it relates to mental and emotional impact,

You might even notice that in addition to them being desensitized to violence or them normalizing in their own mind, creepy things are no longer creepy anymore, it’s no big deal. They might even actually start showing some of these things in like their drawings or other ways that they play. They might even start quoting some of the lines from some of these shows and the lines are disturbing or

acting out the scenario without even realizing how unhealthy it all really is. So, you know, stay alert to some of this when you’re just like, where did you get this from? And the kids aren’t really always able to let you know, depending on their age, but sometimes they are, like my oldest, able to let you know clearly. They’re like, you gave me a lesson. You told me what it was. I know exactly an example of that, you know.

So that’s another thing with open communication and keeping our kids informed so that our children can be independent thinkers in the right way and they can start to identify these things for themselves. But another way that we want to just kind of note how this can impact and break down our children is behaviorally because children definitely mimic a lot of what they see being done. You know, you see children who might be like,

Camille McDaniel (13:36.458)
slapping or choking dolls, slapping or choking each other, why they happen to be like, you know, mimicking some phrase or thinking that it’s funny because the character that they watch does it and that character does it in ways that everybody thinks is funny. Or, you know, maybe it’s not always that the character does it and thinks it’s funny, but the character is doing it.

And they might even become more aggressive with their siblings or aggressive in school or aggressive with their, their guardian. You so this could also pull them away from more healthy real life play because they’re being overstimulated with these shows that make things seem so normal, right? Makes normal activities feel boring and replaces normal activities.

with these unhealthy activities and now the unhealthy activity seems exciting and new and something that really lights up the, you know, the center and part of their brain that gets that hit that high, you know, and things that we find to be healthy and normal for kids to be doing at certain stages of their development. Oh, they’re not interested in that. That’s boring. I don’t know. They don’t want to do that. That’s not what they are really investing their time and watching and learning from.

And then the next thing that is influenced is spirit. So spiritually, you know, this is really one of the things that, you know, where this is Christ in private practice. So we’re emphasizing also, you know, how the spirit is affected. Some of these shows absolutely blur the lines between good and evil. It makes what is wrong seem right. It makes what is evil seem good.

And sometimes what is good seem evil. It is causing confusion. And you know, so it might have the hero, first of all, look distorted. Like I told you, there was one of the little animal characters that’s Huggy Wuggy’s friend who somehow I guess got chopped in half. So from the torso down, there was nothing. And I was like, what in the whole entire world? So

Camille McDaniel (15:53.454)
know the hero might be some distorted figure doing some cruel thing but they get a reward or or it’s seemingly like it’s funny. Oh there’s another one that I’m going to talk about in a minute and I was like oh you got to be kidding me, you’ve got to be kidding me. So you know these are things that again spiritually we start to allow our children to be desensitized to darkness, to things that look demonic.

Like the characters look twisted, the characters’ bodies are disfigured. but this is just normal. This is like normal cartoons, right? Darkness doesn’t seem so dark. That’s no big deal. You know, we had to stop our son from playing something that my husband had on his phone. Like was like a little game. And I looked at the game and I was like, he can’t play this game.

it’s some goat game. Like again, the name is like goat something. I don’t, I can’t remember. But whatever it is, the goat is not alive and the goat has interchangeable faces and those faces, stop. Dark, demonic, stop. So no. And when I was telling my husband, he was like, what? Let me see. He said, goodness, no. And, and so those are two different times where something crept in and I’ma tell you something.

We are really all in their business. Like so, so we really are always checking, wait, let me see what that is. Hold on, wait, let me see what that show, what are they talking about? We are sitting there usually so that we can hear things or see things to make sure that we’re checking what they’re playing, what they’re watching, all of that. But I’ll tell you, sometimes something sneaks right on in and you’re like, well, wait a minute, what was that? And so again, having to just be aware. So, you know,

again spiritually, when we talk about it from a spiritual standpoint, know, or storylines that are twisted and dark that can kind of creep in and cause the conviction of the Lord to be kind of dull. It’s not alarming anymore. It doesn’t kind of alert you that something’s wrong. It just seems normal. Like my youngest child told me about that little goat.

Camille McDaniel (18:15.608)
thing, application, whatever it was, he can’t play it. But he was like, don’t worry, I’m not scared, I’m brave. And it’s like, hmm, interesting. I’m glad that I’m glad he feels brave, right? But it’s like, this is no big deal. And so if if we have children who are ingesting darkness and darkness no longer seems like a big deal, then what can possibly be the ultimate outcome when darkness

goes undetected when darkness, when the true meaning of the darkness is not necessarily caught, right? We are undervaluing, I guess, if you will, for lack of a better term, and minimizing it. Well, if you don’t really recognize it coming anymore, then it sure can do a lot more damage.

when it comes, it can sneak attack you, it can blindside you because you no longer have that alert to say, no, this is absolutely much worse than you think. This is really not cute and this is really not okay. Yeah. So what we want to also know is that again, scripture always gives us some direction about how we should move through these things. And in Proverbs,

chapter four, verse 23, it says, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it springs the issues of life. So what a child repeatedly is watching, a seed is planted in their heart and it will grow into something, whether it be for good or for harm. So we have to be very careful what we have or what we allow them.

to keep in their heart, right? Okay, so let’s be clear. I’m not at all here to talk about anybody’s parenting. If you notice, I have used myself as an example today, okay? So if you didn’t know about these shows, that’s totally okay. I’m gonna share. And you actually might be aware of some additional shows for other age ranges.

Camille McDaniel (20:41.262)
Please, by all means, put that in the comment section so that other parents can be aware. So that other mental health professionals can be aware and when they start doing their assessments, they and they talk to the parents for a portion of that assessment, they can start asking the parents, what kind of shows does your child like to watch? Okay, cartoons, do you know any of them or?

Okay, action shows. Do you know the names of any of them? When you’re talking to the children and you can say, know, what kind of games do you like to play? And they start telling you, where did you learn that game? What kind of shows do you enjoy watching? Really, do you know the name of the show? If they don’t know the name of the show, what’s your favorite character in the show? Do you know the names of any of the characters? You know?

write it down so that you can actually start doing a little bit of research to find out what might be going on in their world. This becomes a part of their journey, their story that influences them for the good or for the negative. So here are some shows and here are some characters that have come across my attention as being Trojan horses. The first one, Happy Tree Friends.

again I told you these names are going to seem like really really peppy and kitty and really sweet and cute. Well it looks like a sweet animal cartoon but it’s actually filled with a lot of like violence and blood and gore you when you look it up they even some and in some of the like

explanations, you’ll kind of see the images like somebody’s getting like hit with a bat that has like spikes on it and you can see body parts have flown of the little cartoon characters or that it’s just completely inappropriate for kids regardless of the name. The the next one I already I talked about like Huggy Wuggy. Huggy Wuggy is a part of a storyline called Poppy Playtime. Now if you look

Camille McDaniel (22:55.782)
The creators of Poppy Playtime said they did not create this for kids. However, Poppy Playtime shows up on YouTube Kids and the name sounds like it belongs in a preschool classroom. Poppy Playtime has a group of like horror characters that have been turned into like plush toys.

and the kids can kind of get drawn into like the toys and the different things that the toys are doing but the whole storyline is all, it’s all demented. Like the whole storyline is dark. It’s about a number of them being tortured, hurt, harmed, disfigured. You know, they’re trapped, they can’t get out. Now, another one. They are combining things now.

So you actually have some videos that show up on YouTube kids that are combining like something that is either not really that bad or something that we all know and love because it’s a classic like Spider-Man and then Spider-Man is paired with something that ends up not making that a great thing to let your kids watch because people have also started embedding things.

inside the video. So once you’re like 15 minutes in, something totally inappropriate or something is said that’s inappropriate or the character itself is then made to do something that’s inappropriate. So and these are usually a little bit easier to spot because sometimes they have like a regular human voice narrating the characters moving. I would stay away from that. Sometimes even the animation itself has been like chopped up and edited so that you see the end

that like the cartoon plays the regular cartoon plays but then in the middle of it is something like some shock like shock value happens or something might come out and scream at you or start talking to your kid about things that are just not okay. So in this case, I saw that like it was Talking Tom, which Talking Tom kind of can get a little fresh but Talking Tom and then something called Slide Eater. Now there, if you look up Slide Eater,

Camille McDaniel (25:15.128)
there is no way SlideEater belongs on YouTube at all. Not a bit, I’m sorry, YouTube kids. Maybe on the adult side, just regular YouTube, because you find any and all things on regular YouTube, but on YouTube kids? no, there’s no way. So like they have jump scares, you know, so that’s what it’s called. I was like trying to think, okay, what is it called? Jump scares where, you have like Talking Tom and that’s like these cats.

And that’s pretty alright, you know, sometimes they’re a little edgy. But these cats and they’re doing whatever these cats are going to be doing. And then like in the in the middle of it somehow then Slideeater pops in and literally it’s like the name Slideeater is like a slide that in the middle has this big mouth full of sharp teeth that then devours people who are going down the slide or shreds them as they are going down the slide.

There is one, now this one, Yarnaby, like the name just sounds like, I don’t know, you wouldn’t really be too alarmed. But when you see the character, it actually doesn’t look right. The smile is like going from top to bottom, the teeth are sharp. know, again, some kids like my youngest saw it and was like, no, it’s just like a toy tiger. And I’m like, no, no, no, it’s not.

No, because there’s no toy tiger that should look this chopped and screwed. And then when you see additional cartoons of it, you know, again, pretty dark. Sprunky. Sprunky is this like, weird little glitchy animation. Sometimes they have things on there that are not really appropriate that the sprunkies are doing. There’s some kind of dark undertones.

It can cause a little sensory overwhelm too, just to note for some people, but I would definitely look at that because the spunky characters, they’re not for kids in my opinion. There’s some others that like, I won’t keep going because there’s some others that I haven’t really had an opportunity to look at, but I did see some of like the name, you know, but.

Camille McDaniel (27:39.566)
Like there was like something like Amanda the adventurer or something. I don’t know. I think it was like some some kind of copy off a door at the Explorer, but you know, just not right. So either way, kids are drawn to these things because it’s novel, it’s different, it’s in cartoon form. Shock value, because kind of kids get scared sometimes at some of the things jumping out at you and then and then it’s kind of like,

like it’s a shock and then it’s a funny thing. my gosh, look, you know, or that’s gross, ill, you know, so it’s taking them through all of these emotions they haven’t really always experienced or had to, you know, show outwardly. And so they’re kind of dealing with how all of that hits them. And then if there are peers, like, you know, if their friends at school happen to be talking about it, that might be something that continues it. They don’t want to be left out. They want to be in the know of what’s going on. And, you know, these these bright visuals, like the colors and all of that.

It kind of floods their senses. It can make it really addictive, you know, and we already know how that works with like video games. Well, the same concept can work with these shows because the makers of the shows obviously want people watching it more. So, so what can we do? What can we do as mental health professionals? What can we do as parents? And here’s the good news. You can absolutely protect your kids from these influences without instilling fear in your kids. First of all,

You want to watch things with your kids. What are they doing? You know, you may not always be sitting right next to them, but have it on a general screen where everyone can see as they’re passing through. You know, be careful not to just give your kids your phone and then they’re off in some room or the corner and you don’t know what they’re watching. You can’t even hear what they’re listening to. So, you know, make it so that you can monitor what’s going on and you can pick up on when things don’t really seem right.

even if it says and has a YouTube kids label and use the parental controls where you can. You can kind of like use it in restrict mode. There’s certain tools sometimes that you can use on YouTube. For example, I think you can even take off the search ability so the kids can’t type in certain things to start searching around and looking around. But instead you just put it on the channels that you want them to have. You can block certain channels and take them away. Don’t have it request or

Camille McDaniel (30:05.186)
don’t have it show up, you you can talk with your kids openly, talk with them openly about their faith, talk with them openly about how sometimes some of the things that show up on television or on these videos conflict with, you know, what the Lord is asking us to do, what the Lord is asking us to meditate on. So, you know, teach them the Bible so that their discernment gets stronger, even if they’re little, it gets stronger and stronger as they grow. So, you know,

The Bible even talks about that, like whatever things are true, whatever things are right, whatever things are pure, meditate on these things, things that’s the book of Philippians. So, you you wanna be able to just inform your kids and then offer alternatives. Now, these things that I’m talking about, I’m talking as if I’m talking to a parent, you know, some of us are parents on here, but these are the things that you can share with your client’s parents and what they can do.

in order to protect, to guide, to inform their kids. So you can offer alternatives to what they had been watching. There’s a lot of things like, my kids like Minnow, some kids watch Veggie Tales, some kids watch other things that are just really wholesome, you know, that are on television that don’t have all those dark undertones, and that are just regular kids shows. So you just watch out and

and kind of vet some of these things and just find some wholesome alternatives, whatever the show may be, just making sure that it’s positive. So I wanna thank you for sticking with me through this episode. I encourage you to do some research of your own so that you can see how these things might come together to impact your clients or even people in your own life, your personal life.

that you love dearly and so that we can help parents, communities, guardians be a lot more alerted to the things that might be going on that might be Trojan horses in their lives or the lives of the children, not their lives, but in the lives of the children. So until next time, thank you so much and God bless.