Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
Preston
Credits
No. of Subscribers
YouTube Join Date
Posting Frequency
Reviewer
YouTube Channel Review
No one can say he’s not organized.
I’m referring to Preston Arsement, the 30-year-old personality behind many popular YouTube channels, including Preston, PrestonPlayz, PrestonGames, PrestonReacts and TBNRFrags.
What do each of these channels have to offer? Well, let’s find out.
His namesake channel, Preston, is the largest of the bunch, boasting a subscriber count of more than 27 million. It contains mostly skits, challenges and myth busting, and videos often include his wife and real-life family members, too.
Meanwhile, PrestonPlayz, PrestonGamez and TBNRFrags (the latter acronym standing for “The Best Never Rest”) have a combined count of 28 million subscribers and focus primarily on Minecraft, Roblox and first-person shooter games such as Fortnite, respectively.
Finally, PrestonReacts, as you might expect, is Arsement’s content reaction channel, and it adds another 3 million subscribers to his channel conglomerate.
Cumulatively, the channels provide subscribers with nearly 8,000 videos to watch. With so much content waiting to be absorbed, what can audiences expect to see?
POSITIVE CONTENT
The vast majority of Arsement’s content is quite tame. Many videos focus on harmless pranks, challenges or gaming that likely won’t be of much concern to parents (with some exceptions, noted below). While there isn’t much that we’d rate as strictly “positive” or “negative,” a large amount of his content falls somewhere in between, in a purely neutral territory.
What’s more, Arsement is very friendly and positive, as are those who appear in his videos.
CONTENT CONCERNS
While Arsement’s modern content is based in games to which children typically gravitate, some older videos include game franchises that parents might not want those same young children watching, such as Far Cry 3.
On a similar note, some of Arsement’s Roblox content on PrestonGamez includes horror titles with jump scares and elements (like serial killers and demons). PrestonPlayz, while mainly sticking to Minecraft, also has videos from horror games such as Five Nights at Freddy’s and Poppy Playtime. PrestonReacts likewise posts a number of reaction videos to scary content.
A number of videos, primarily on PrestonReacts, contain a variety of sexual references as jokes. Similarly, some of the thumbnails of these videos include women in bikinis (a choice we speculate was made as sensual clickbait, since the videos we viewed didn’t feature anything similar to the thumbnail).
Language is minimal. One video contains an f-word euphemism, and we heard “crap” in a single video. However, God’s name is infrequently used in vain. Likewise, in one reaction video, the subject of one video takes Jesus’ name in vain.
CHANNEL SUMMARY
So, is Preston appropriate for your child? Well, that may depend on which of his channels you visit.
As a whole, Arsement’s channels aren’t that bad—and were you to watch a random video from the aforementioned near-8,000, chances are you probably wouldn’t find much issue with it. However, there are some exceptions.
We found PrestonReacts to be the worst of the channels in terms of content concerns due to some sexual quips and videos containing content frightening to children. And while many videos on PrestonGamez and PrestonPlayz were fine, the gaming channels likewise had some scary content on them, too—scares that, while unlikely to phase a teenager, might cause elementary-age kids some distress.
The main channel, Preston, seemed to be the tamest of the bunch. Given that it’s the most popular channel by far, that may come as a relief to families.
Kennedy Unthank
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
Latest Reviews
Episode 263: All I Want for Christmas Is What TikTok Tells Me. Plus, Kevin Sorbo
Read Review »Should Your Child Use AI Image Generators?
Read Review »Movie Monday: ‘Moana 2’ Sails to Record Win
Read Review »On the Radar: Influencers Don’t Fact Check, Posting About Self-Harm Is Harmful and the Pink Tote Lid Trend
Read Review »