Digital Empathy: Examining the Effects of YouTube Disability-Related Content on Prosocial Behavior and Perceptions Among Preadolescents

Middle childhood represents a critical developmental epoch wherein social cognition, out-group schemas, and implicit biases regarding disability are crystallized or reshaped. While traditional media has historically perpetuated ableist tropes, the democratization of user-generated content platforms such as YouTube provides an unprecedented ecological space for authentic parasocial contact with disabled peers and creators. Grounded in Allport's Intergroup Contact Theory, the Media Practice Model, and contemporary paradigms of digital empathy, this proposed doctoral-level experimental study investigates the causal mechanisms through which curated YouTube media consumption influences preadolescents' (ages 10–12) explicit and implicit perceptions of disability, as well as their downstream offline prosocial behavior. Employing a rigorous pretest-posttest randomized controlled trial (N = 120), participants will be stratified by age and gender and randomly assigned to either an experimental condition—exposed to a vetted multimedia stimulus set featuring first-person narratives and inclusive social interactions of youth with diverse visible and invisible disabilities—or a control condition consisting of neutral, non-social environmental stimuli. Dependent variables will be operationalized through a multi-methodological battery incorporating a validated Modification of the Perception of Children with Disabilities Scale (PCDS), implicit social distance measures, and a novel behavioral helping paradigm quantifying resource allocation and cooperative assistance. Anticipated findings aim to elucidate whether parasocial digital contact can bridge intergroup empathy gaps, providing theoretical contributions to media psychology and actionable frameworks for educators, digital designers, and policymakers seeking to leverage algorithmic spaces for proactive social-emotional learning and inclusive socialization.