Mukbangs and the Digital Childhood: Should We Be Concerned?
In the ever-expanding universe of online content, one genre continues to gain curious popularity, mukbangs. Originating in South Korea, mukbang (a portmanteau of “eating” and “broadcast”) refers to videos where hosts consume large quantities of food while interacting with an audience. While it began as a social experience for isolated adults, today’s mukbang culture spans all ages and continents; reaching screens in homes and schools.
But what happens when the audience isn’t just adults or teens, but children?
The Allure: Why Kids Watch Mukbangs
For children, mukbangs offer a fascinating sensory experience. The bright colors, exaggerated sounds, and charismatic hosts tap into sensory appeal in ways that traditional children’s programming doesn’t. These videos often feature:
Chewy, slurpy, squishy ASMR sounds
Bright, candy-colored foods
Soothing tones or silly facial expressions
Repetitive, predictable routines
It’s a world that feels safe, digestible (pun intended), and hypnotic. In short, mukbangs speak kid fluently.
The Psychology: Companionship and Comfort
Children often watch mukbangs while eating alone. It’s not just entertainment, it’s digital companionship. In a post-pandemic era of increased isolation and screen dependence, children may turn to mukbangs to:
Simulate social eating
Cope with loneliness
Feel connected to a friendly face
Mukbangs become stand-ins for real-world mealtime rituals. But the parasocial relationship, one-sided emotional bonds with digital figures, raises questions: Are these interactions emotionally healthy? Or are they a pacifier for deeper needs?
Food Messaging and Disordered Eating
Mukbangs rarely model healthy eating. Instead, they often portray:
Overeating as normal or entertaining
Unrealistic portion sizes
Fast consumption
Hyper-palatable foods (sugar, oil, salt)
For children still forming their relationships with food, this can skew perceptions. A child might think eating a family-sized pizza in one sitting is "fun" or "cool," without understanding the consequences, or the performative nature of the act.
Ironically, some creators film mukbangs but don’t actually swallow the food, cutting the camera or vomiting offscreen to maintain health. This disconnection between what’s seen and what’s real is problematic when the audience can't tell the difference.
Interface Design and Algorithmic Drift
YouTube’s algorithm doesn’t just allow mukbang discovery, it encourages it. A child watching a Peppa Pig video can quickly fall into a rabbit hole of ASMR food videos and bizarre, overstimulating mukbangs. The platforms are designed for retention, not reflection.
This kind of content funneling is rarely transparent to young viewers and even less so to their parents. Without careful monitoring, children can easily end up consuming hours of overstimulating or inappropriate material under the guise of "harmless food videos."
The Problem of Kids Making Mukbangs
Some kids are not only watching mukbangs, they’re creating them. And they're going viral. This raises serious ethical issues:
Child labor: Are they being compensated fairly?
Consent: Do they understand what they're putting online?
Health: Are they being asked to eat in excess for likes?
The line between play and exploitation blurs fast when a family’s income depends on a child performing for views.
Mukbangs exist at a strange intersection of comfort, consumption, and capitalism. For adults, they may be quirky or soothing. For children, they’re something more formative, shaping ideas about food, bodies, relationships, and even reality itself.
It’s time we pay attention not just to what our kids are watching, but why, and how those digital moments may be shaping who they become.
