Children are turning away from TV to watch “oddly satisfying” videos of slime, a report has found.
Research suggests that young people are becoming increasingly disinterested in traditional TV, and 80% of children are familiar users of YouTube.
An Ofcom report charting the trend toward online content also found a demand for relaxing videos of slime being shaped.
The media watchdog revealed that children, aged between four and 16, were using the search terms “satisfying” and “oddly satisfying” to find videos which offered a particular physical response.
Slime videos come under the umbrella of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos, which seek to produce a calming and tingling sensation by reproducing mundane tasks and sounds, like tapping, scratching, or whispering into a microphone.
The report said: “Throughout the sample, many children of different ages were watching videos whose appeal seemed to be related to their sensory or tactile nature, beyond the normal audio and visual features of video content.
“A great number of these videos, particularly popular among children under 10 in the sample, involve so-called ‘slime’, a malleable and sticky substance made by mixing sodium borate and water.
“Slime videos are made and uploaded to YouTube by both adults and children, often without the need for speech, and many have gained over one million views.
“This is thought to be because of their ‘oddly satisfying’ quality.”
One child surveyed in the Ofcom research, Rae, aged nine, said of slime videos: “I like watching it because it’s so satisfying… I like the sound the slime makes, that popping sound.”
More children are turning to YouTube, with Ofcom research suggesting they preferred solitary online activities to interaction with friends, which was “too much effort”.