Erin Copen Howard stood silently and watched as her five-year-old son Odin scrolled intently through YouTube Shorts videos on the living room TV, while his seven-year-old sister Aurora traveled through the “My Movie” Roblox-verse on her tablet.
Minutes later, Odin slapped on a VR headset and journeyed into “Penguin Paradise,” his arms flailing about as he shouted to other contestants inside the game.
“This is the death of television,” Copen Howard, 44, told TheWrap. “That’s all they watch, YouTube Shorts. And it breaks my heart.”
For most of the past two decades, she has spent her time developing reality television shows.