Disturbing trend developing on YouTube for teens and young people

Chances are you’ll be spending some time on the Internet today, along with many young kids and teens across the world.

Some of that could be spent on video-sharing website YouTube, where a disturbing trend is emerging among young people.

Young teens are posting videos on YouTube posing the question, “am I pretty or ugly?” to anybody who chooses to search and watch the video. The videos can easily be found by searching “am I pretty or ugly” in YouTube.

The number of hits on some of these videos are in the millions the comments range from the positive and nice to downright cruel. One person responding to one girl’s video encouraged her to kill herself.

CityNews spoke with Sharon Hart, who teaches self-esteem in the Toronto school boards.

“This is risky behaviour, if you read some of the comments there are some on there that are quite solicitous,” Hart said.”It breaks my heart, it just breaks my heart.”

Hart adds that one of the red flags she sees is some kids as young as eight using social-media sites like Facebook.

Advice from some professionals encourages that young children shouldn’t be unsupervised on video-sharing and social-networking sites.

Parents are also encouraged to monitor their child’s online activity closely.

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