Best of YouTube 2023: Plugged In’s Year-End Picks

Yes, it’s that time of year again. The air is growing chilly. Depending on where you live, snow is starting to fall. Someone’s named a snowman Parson Brown. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that, everywhere you go, it’s beginning to look a lot like the time of year we release our Best of YouTube blog!

Plugged In started reviewing YouTube channels back in 2020, and for good reason. YouTube is the second-most visited website after Google itself (which, if we’re being truly honest with ourselves, technically makes YouTube the most visited website, since Google is just a means to get to websites you actually want to visit).

What that statistic means is that it’s very likely your child has a YouTuber or two that he or she enjoys watching. It may mean the very same for you, dear reader. And I’ll admit to having my own favorites, too. Over the last year, I’ve reviewed plenty of problematic channels—but I’ve checked out some pretty good ones, too. So, we’ve put together our top five cleanest and most enjoyable channels that we reviewed this year—channels that, while perhaps not perfect, outshined the others enough to make this list.

And, just like last year, to keep this from simply becoming a list of Christian YouTube channels we’ve reviewed, this list does not include them. For those channels, I’ll be writing another blog post highlighting them soon.

So, without further ado, let’s get started. And make sure to check out our previous year’s winners!

Outdoor Boys

(5.2 million subscribers – Educational, Family, Sports)

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of camping. I’d much rather experience nature during the day and experience a soft bed at night. But Luke Nichols and his family on Outdoor Boys definitely makes it all seem a bit more enticing. Through their adventures, viewers will learn a whole lot about the outdoors—from catching, cleaning and cooking animals to survival tactics. And as long as you aren’t too squeamish about the whole preparing the animal for dinner thing, there’s not much here that you’ll need to worry about. In fact, maybe Outdoor Boys will encourage you to enjoy a bit more of God’s creation yourself!

Geography King

(225,000 subscribers – Culture/Commentary, Educational, Traveler/Influencer)

As Outdoor Boys ventures to and fro across the country, you might wonder where they’re going. And who better to get directions from than royalty? Geography King’s kingdom extends across the United States, and he is generous in distributing the abundance of geographical knowledge he’s accumulated over his years of travel. Interested in an overview of a city you plan to visit? Kyle’s got you covered. Looking for some tips and general life improvements for an upcoming road trip? Yep, that’s there, too. Maybe you just like looking at interesting maps and want someone to explain them a bit more? That’s OK; it’s all available on Geography King.

Simon’s Cat

(6.1 million – Animation, Arts)

But if all this talk from Outdoor Boys and Geography King makes you shudder, perhaps you’d rather stay home and enjoy the animated mishaps of Simon Tofield’s cat on the aptly named Simon’s Cat. I described the channel in my review as “the modern-day equivalent of opening the newspaper to the funny pages.” Each short animation follows the mischievous cat as it wiggles and claws its way into Simon’s heart. For those who own a pet, it’s likely that at least one of these videos will remind you of your own ball of fur or feather. Viewers can rightly expect that the worst of Simon’s Cat will be moments that you’d likely encounter with a real cat—that is, no worse than a scratch or sullied carpet.

Townsends

(2.3 million – Cooking, Educational)

Now that we’ve mentioned sullied carpets, it’s probably not the best time to segue to a channel about food … but look at that—here we are! Now, Townsends isn’t your typical cooking channel—this one, run by Jon Townsend, seeks to educate viewers about an 18^th-century lifestyle. That means that subscribers will learn all about the era by someone who seeks to live in it—from how and what they cooked and wore to how they built homes and ovens. While previous centuries can feel less important, given our modern-day bustle, Jon’s channel helps to teach it in a way that makes the subject feel much more tangible and real.

Art for Kids Hub

(7.5 million – Arts, Educational, Family, How-To)

And speaking of making things feel tangible and real, that’s a skill I do not possess when it comes to art. I’m such a poor artist that I’d frame a stick figure if I could draw straight. But I’m getting better, and that’s mostly due to the Art for Kids Hub YouTube channel. The channel’s premise is simple: A father, Rob Jensen, teaches his children how to draw all sorts of things—and you can draw along with them! The channel provides step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow. And with a new upload nearly every day, there’s thousands of options for viewers to choose from. And, as a bonus, it’s not often we come across a channel where we fail to find anything noteworthy to put into our Content Concerns section, but Art for Kids Hub is one such channel.

Conclusion

YouTube is a virtual ocean of content, one in which parents just might find themselves drowning and grasping for any semblance of a flotation device. And while there’s a lot of problematic content that lurks in the depths, some channels are the equivalent of life preservers—bobbing safely and invitingly in YouTube’s choppy waters.

Plugged In aims to review one YouTube channel every week. In fact, many of our reviews this year were channels recommended by our audience in last year’s blog post (including three of our selections above). So, if there’s one we haven’t yet reviewed that you’d like us to check out, let us know in the comment section below, and we’ll add it to our list for consideration!