Kids Ask YouTube: "Am I Ugly?"

A disturbing trend has recently broken out on YouTube involving young kids, mostly girls, seeking honest answers about their looks by asking viewers: “Am I ugly?”

Simply search the phrase “am I ugly?” and tons of videos with preteen girls in front of their computer screens will pop up. The tweens fidget and smile awkwardly in their videos as they wait for viewers to scrutinize them.  A few hope we think they’re pretty, and others make sure we know that they already think they’re ugly. Frankly, we don’t know what’s more disturbing: the fact that these girls are posting the videos to begin with, or that thousands of people have commented on them.

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The videos are described as "a masochistic way to diminish their anxiety," says New York-based child psychiatrist Francisco Gonzalez-Franco, as reported by Yahoo's Trending Now. Gonzalez went on to explain, “The girls feel incomplete, and they want people to confirm their fear that they are ugly.” This isn’t the first instance of kids letting others publicly judge their looks. There’s an app out that measures a person’s looks and judges their ugliness, called the Ugly Meter.

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All around it’s painful to watch and becomes even more painful once you read the uncensored (and often cruel) comments. The videos left some of the commenters—and us—asking, “Where are their parents?”

Do you monitor your kid’s online accounts? How would you handle it if you found out your kid had made one of these videos?