YOUTH NOW
YouTube Sensation Super Mario Logan Is Coming For Your Kids
Even under ‘restricted mode,’ the platform is showing kids some truly vile programming
In the summer of 2017, John Cook, a writer and editor living in the suburbs of New York, noticed that his three young kids, all boys, had become enamored with a mysterious figure known as Jeffy. His eldest son, nine-year-old H. (we’ve agreed to identify them by their initials due to their ages), mentioned his name while joking around with a friend from his fourth-grade class, adopting an odd speech impediment whenever they quoted something Jeffy had said. Later, Cook heard his youngest, W., a preschooler, singing a song including double entendre about exposing himself: “Wanna/see my/pencil?” Under parental interrogation, he attributed the lyrics to Jeffy. By then, his boys were talking about Jeffy all the time.
Jeffy, as Cook later learned, is a recurring character in an online video franchise commonly known as Super Mario Logan, which includes a network of overlapping social media channels, primarily on YouTube, with derivative titles like Super Luigi Logan and Super Bowser Logan. Over the past 10 years, Super Mario Logan has published hundreds of videos featuring a mix of brand-name plush dolls and store-bought puppets. Manipulated…
