Why Do Kids Love Watching Toy Unboxing Videos?

Toy unboxing videos—shows where kids unbox and play with new toys—are wildly popular, ranking among YouTube’s top content. Take Ryan’s World: it has racked up tens of billions of views since its start, transforming Ryan and his family into a multimillion-dollar brand.

What’s really happening when kids pick certain shows, especially toy unboxing videos? I asked Professor Ying Xu, who researches children’s media and technology. Her recent study highlights why children choose certain media, how algorithms shape their viewing, and how different parenting styles play a role.

Children’s Digital Autonomy Is Revealing

Professor Xu’s team spent a year observing thirteen families, each with a three- or four-year-old, representing diverse backgrounds. By visiting homes multiple times and watching children’s daily routines, they captured the real-world factors guiding kids’ digital decisions.

Parents often dismissed toy unboxing as a tacky marketing ploy. Yet the researchers found that children didn’t necessarily want the toys on screen. Sometimes, they even ignored identical toys in their homes. One mother’s comment on the parent-child interactions in toy unboxing videos offered insight: “They’re so good at playing with kids. We usually just let him play by himself.” Kids seem drawn not to the toy but to the adult–child interaction they see on screen—mirroring a social connection they may be missing offline.

My Insights: How Media Can Meet Kids Needs

Children pick videos that reflect their offline developmental needs and interests. If toy unboxing meets a developmental need for warm social interactions, that’s the channel they’ll watch on repeat. If we want more depth in children’s media, we need more thoughtful, story-driven media that meets the child’s relational or emotional needs.

Parents play a big role in the demand for media that meet’s their child’s developmental needs. In a previous newsletter, I discussed the hidden environmental layers that shape child development. Professor Xu’s study further underscores how profoundly the family environment influences children’s media choices.

In Professor Xu’s study, the families that were studied largely mapped to two contrasting parenting styles, which were categorized based on the work of sociologist Annette Lareau:

• Concerted Cultivation: Middle-class parents often manage every aspect of development, including screen use. They might limit app choices to “safe” content and closely watch for overuse.

• Accomplishment of Natural Growth: Working-class or immigrant families tend to let children explore more freely. They view screens like any other toy; guidance is minimal unless the child needs help.

Intriguingly, kids in both groups ended up glued to unboxing videos—not just because of ads or marketing, but because these videos offer social and emotional cues that children crave. This signals that we need to align children’s media both to the developmental needs of children, and to different parenting styles.

Key Takeaways for Practice

1. Bridge the Gap: If you’re uneasy with toy unboxing or similarly repetitive videos, consider how to replicate that adult–child play dynamic. Watch together or talk about the video to fulfill that social connection.

2. Honor Parenting Differences: Whether you lean toward structured “concerted cultivation” or freer “natural growth,” consider how your family values shape media rules.

Research Deep Dive

One of the researchers who provides a helpful lens on these parenting styles is Annette Lareau (PhD). She’s a sociologist best known for her in-depth work on class, race, and family life, including how different socioeconomic groups approach child-rearing. Lareau coined the terms “concerted cultivation” and “accomplishment of natural growth,” showing that middle-class families tend to micromanage every facet of children’s development—whereas working-class and immigrant families often give children more freedom and autonomy.

It’s worth noting that Lareau’s findings haven’t been without controversy. Some scholars argue that her approach doesn’t sufficiently address the structural barriers—such as under-resourced neighborhoods or systemic inequalities—that limit families’ choices. Despite these debates, her framework still offers a valuable starting point for thinking about how resources and philosophy can shape parenting, including children’s media use.

Key Findings

• Structured Enrichment: Middle-class parents often deliberately curate apps and programs, blending tech into scheduled learning activities.

• Greater Autonomy: Working-class kids typically receive looser oversight, potentially leading to more total screen time but less guidance on skill development.

• Parent-Child Negotiations: Middle-class children learn to negotiate screen rules, gaining tech-savvy and confidence in self-advocacy.

• Immigrant Family Dynamics: Immigrant parents often view tech as a path to better educational outcomes for children, though language barriers and limited digital literacy can complicate those ambitions.

Parenting style strongly shapes children’s digital experiences. Where concerted cultivation fosters structured exploration, natural growth can nurture autonomy. Both approaches bring strengths and challenges, highlighting the need for policies that ensure all families, irrespective of class or background, can provide meaningful digital learning opportunities for their children.

If you want to read more about Professor Xu’s study, this is the title: Kalinowski, R. D. T., Xu, Y., & Salen Tekinbaş, K. (2021). The ecological context of preschool-aged children’s selection of media content. In CHI ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery.

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