YouTubers You Really Want Your Teens to Follow
Parents of teenagers may find it difficult to give their children more independence on the Internet, instead of controlling everything that is on their watchlist. But out in the wild, there are plenty of YouTube channels that are both educational and creative, funny, weird, or rough enough to keep your teen’s attention. Here are the top 9 YouTube creators for teens based on kid-friendly content and education disguised as fun.
Moriah Elizabeth
The Basics: Moriah does a range of creative projects, from baking to face painting, but she’s best known for her soft makeup. With the help of glue and paint, she transforms her favorite and clumsy soft toys into bright new characters.
Teen attraction: goofy personality, loads of cute stuffed animals, and Moriah’s creative cast of stuffed and feline friends.
Message to Parents: Inspiration for kids to take creative risks.
Bonus Material: Moriah Elizabeth self-published two volumes of Make This Book , a workbook full of creative prompts and invitations to make a mess of her art; she also created an app called Spark Creative Play with the same creative cues.
Emily Grasley and The Brain Scoop
The Basics: Grasli posted over 200 videos for The Brain Scoop before moving on to creating content on her own channel. She explores space, nature, history, paleontology, books and animals.
Appeal to teenagers: taxidermy?
A Message to Parents: Behind the scenes of the museum’s contents with experts to explain everything.
Bonus material: Grasley’s two video sequences – “Art Lab ” and “Prehistoric Journey” .
Wee Hart
The Basics: Hart combines music and math, making it fun with drawings and geometric paper tricks.
Attractiveness of teenagers: hexaflexagons and Möbius strips.
attraction for parents. Using music and art, Hart can introduce math concepts to kids in a new way.
Bonus Material: Cooking with Math .
Be smart with Joe Hanson
Essentials: A PBS-branded channel covering biology, climate science, physics and more.
Teen attraction: short videos (most are 10-15 minutes long) with detailed answers to scientific riddles like why blue is so rare and the magic of mirrors.
Attractiveness for parents: reliability and quality of products at the level of PBS.
Bonus material: In Our Nature , a wildlife documentary series.
Art Center for Children
The Basics: Artist Rob Jensen gives step-by-step drawing instructions for popular characters, cute items, and seasonal items with the help of his four kids.
Teen attraction: They post five videos a week and there are over 2,000 videos already available, so most kids should be able to find a topic and skill level they’re comfortable with.
Parent attraction: Because he paints with his kids, Rob’s videos include built-in encouragement, good pacing, and examples of artistic diversity.
Bonus Material: A playlist of 51 Pokémon drawing videos.
My frog stuff
The Basics: The mom-and-daughter team brings artful dollhouse construction, miniatures and makeovers to teens (and adults) who still love to play with dollhouses.
Teen attraction: Who doesn’t love a diorama?
Attractiveness for parents: the level of crafting is difficult, but reproducible; The videos are not made specifically for children, but are safe for children.
Bonus Material: Puppet Dramas like Life on the Shelf and Sommer & Cali .
Physics Girl
The Basics: Through adventures and interviews with experts, Diana Covern makes the mysteries of physics interesting and understandable.
Teen attraction: Seems supernatural, but it’s science – videos of moving rocks at the Playa Racecourse, giant tunnels in the desert, and the mysteries of the universe.
Message to Parents: It’s never too early to start learning physics.
Bonus material: An explanation of the Time Crystals , a “new” phase of matter that is somehow understandable.
Mike loves science
The Basics: Educator Mike Wilson uses music to make science and programming fun and accessible to kids. He calls the channel “a musical utility to help you study.”
Teen Appeal: Mike is cool.
A Message to Parents: Don’t we agree that our kids will probably need a basic knowledge of coding?
Bonus material: water bears .
brave desert
The Basics: Hosts Coyote Peterson, Christina Wilson, Mark Vince and Mario Aldecoa are very active in their interaction with nature.
Teen attraction: poisonous insect tricks, mermaid training and rough trials.
Message to Parents: Watching videos of dangerous animals is preferable to visiting them in person.
Bonus material: Among all the shocking videos, there is solid conservation content .