scorecardThese videos each have over 4 billion views on YouTube. But unless you have kids, you've probably never seen them.
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These videos each have over 4 billion views on YouTube. But unless you have kids, you've probably never seen them.

Julie Gerstein   

These videos each have over 4 billion views on YouTube. But unless you have kids, you've probably never seen them.
Parents are still haunted by the song "Baby Shark."Taylor Hill/Getty Images
  • Some of YouTube's most popular videos ever are those made for children.
  • If you're not a parent, you've probably never seen them, though.

Ask any parent and they'll tell you: "The Wheels on the Bus" go round and round and round ... seemingly forever.

Ask any parent and they
Pinkfong!/YouTube

A quick perusal of the top 20 most-viewed YouTube videos of all time yields plenty of the expected hit pop songs, including Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" and "Sorry" by Justin Bieber.

But "Wheels on the Bus" isn't far behind. A version of the song is currently the 12th most popular video in the history of YouTube, with 4,220,716,707 views. Yes, that's billion.

In fact, YouTube's "Billion Views Club" includes a disproportionate number of kid-focused content. That may be because kids' content tends to overperform on the platform. According to a 2019 Pew Research study, YouTube videos aimed at kids and featuring kids in the video were more popular than any other type of video posted to the platform. Videos that featured kids in the actual video, as "Baby Shark" does, got three times as many views, on average, than other videos.

Among the top 20 most-viewed videos on YouTube are the seven children's videos, totaling an astonishing 41 billion views and counting.

Read on to see what kid-oriented content has dominated YouTube's "Billion Views Club."

7. Cocomelon's animated rendition of "Wheels on the Bus" has been viewed more than 4.2 million times.

Cocomelon's colorful, buzzy, video for "Wheels on the Bus" has 4,221,200,857 views and helped turn the channel into a bonafide hit.

The channel was launched in 2006 by a husband and wife duo, and boasts 139 million subscribers, a Netflix show, a live touring show, and a "storytime" podcast.  

6. This clip, dubbed "Recipe for Disaster," has been viewed more than 4.5 billion times.

"Recipe for Disaster," from the "Get Movies" YouTube channel, is one of the few non-musical entries on the list. It's an episode from the Russian animated series "Masha and the Bear," and tells the story of the friendship between a young, impetuous girl and a bear — and their adventures in porridge.

It has 4,502,016,242 views. 

5. Miroshka TV's "Learning Colors", another Russian-language entry, has been viewed more than 4.5 billion times.

The 9th most viewed video on YouTube aims to teach kids about colors by introducing them to a group of maniacally grinning animated eggs. The eggs are cracked open, filled with paint, and then smash themselves to bits.  

The video, from Russian channel Мирошка Тв (which translates to Miroshka TV), was originally posted in 2018 and has been viewed 4,593,695,422 times. 

4. ChuChu TV's "Phonics Song with TWO Words" has more than 4.7 billion views.

The "Phonics Song with Two Words" is exactly what it sounds like — a phonics-teaching track that offers up two examples for each letter of the alphabet. 

3. Another Cocomelon video, "Bath Song," has 5.5 billion views.

"Bath Song" offers a rather horrifying mashup of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and "Baby Shark," and celebrates the merits of good personal hygiene. 

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" was originally published in 1917 and is currently in the public domain, which makes it an easy option for YouTubers. 

Music in the public domain — that is, music for which the copyright protection has expired— is bread and butter for kids' YouTube channels because it's royalty-free. Copyright protections last for the life of the author, plus an additional 70 years beyond the author's death.    

2. "Johny Johny, Yes Papa," to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," has more than 6.3 billion views.

This simple animated video, featuring a song to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," is the third-most-popular video on YouTube, but isn't the original "Johny" video. 

The song was originally uploaded to YouTube by the now-defunct channel Shemrock Nursery Rhymes, but it was a version uploaded by LooLoo Kids in 2016, featuring an animated, diaper-clad bad boy, that reached more than 6 billion views. 

1. Pinkfong's "Baby Shark Dance" has more than 10.9 billion views.

 

No surprise here: "Baby Shark Dance," a life-ruining earworm of a song that's been watched more than 10.9 billion times, is the most-viewed video in the history of YouTube. 

The song made its South Korean creators rich, but it also spawned a whole anti-"doo doo doo doo" discourse among parents who found the song grating. 

The overwhelming popularity of the song and its many iterations and parodies has led to a Netflix movie and a TV show.

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