Restricting data collection on children’s videos made YouTube’s kids’ content scarcer and worse. A study of 5,066 top American channels finds that after a 2019 privacy settlement took effect, made-for-kids creators released 18% fewer videos, cut corners on quality, and lost a fifth of their views.
The research is by Garrett A. Johnson and Tesary Lin of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, Liang Zhong of the University of Hong Kong, and James C. Cooper of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. It was published online in Management Science on May 4, 2026.
The “COPPAcalypse”
In September 2019, YouTube settled charges from the Federal Trade Commission that it had collected personal identifiers from children without parental consent, in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Alphabet paid a $170 million penalty.
From January 6, 2020, YouTube disabled personalized advertising on made-for-kids videos worldwide. It also turned off engagement features that rely on persistent identifiers, such as adding videos to playlists, autoplay on the homepage, end screens and subscriber notifications. Some creators nicknamed the change the “COPPAcalypse.”
The authors drew channels from Social Blade’s list of the top 100,000 YouTube channels, keeping US channels in education, entertainment and film and animation, the three categories that hold about 80% of made-for-kids content. They classified each as made-for-kids, non-made-for-kids or mixed based on videos released before the announcement, and compared them from July 2018 to December 2020 using a difference-in-differences design.
Fewer videos, lower quality
Made-for-kids channels cut their video output by about 18%, and mixed channels by about 15%. Mixed channels also pivoted hard: the share of their videos labelled for kids fell by 13.5 percentage points, and 37.2% of them switched to making only non-kids content in 2020.
Some channels stopped entirely. In 2020, 17.3% of made-for-kids channels released no videos at all, compared with 4.9% of non-kids channels.
Quality slipped on several measures. The share of original content on made-for-kids channels fell by 9%, as creators reused more material, and the share of videos with manual captions dropped by 28%. Viewer ratings, measured by likes relative to views, fell by 9%.
The authors note that looking only at the number of videos understates the policy’s full impact by 45%, because the new kids’ content was also less original.
Viewers left, and small channels suffered most
Views of made-for-kids channels fell by 20%, and mixed channels by 15%, with new subscriptions also declining. The authors conclude that viewers did not find enough substitute content to make up for the drop.
The damage was concentrated among smaller creators. The smallest quarter of made-for-kids channels cut releases by 24.9%, compared with 12.7% for the largest quarter. The smallest channels lost 36% of their views, while the largest saw no significant change. As a result, both content creation and viewing became more concentrated among the top kids’ channels.
The authors list several caveats. Because the settlement removed ad personalization and engagement features at the same time, the study cannot separate their effects. Their sample was drawn in June 2021, so channels that fell off the top list may be missing, which they say should make the estimates conservative. Demand data started only in October 2019, and the pandemic boosted viewing during the study period.
They point out that proposed US rules such as COPPA 2.0 and the Kids Online Safety Act would restrict both kinds of personalization for older children too, the same combination YouTube adopted in 2020.
Study Details:
- Title: COPPAcalypse? The YouTube Settlement’s Impact on Kids’ Content
- Authors: Garrett A. Johnson, Tesary Lin, Liang Zhong, James C. Cooper
- Journal: Management Science
- Publication Date: May 4, 2026
- DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.05295