Ming observes Indonesian children aged 2 to 4 who speak little or no Indonesian, preferring English instead. Parents sometimes must use English at home. He attributes this to English-language children's media on YouTube and to elitism as a primary driver of the shift.
It's YouTube. It's the videos, it's the nursery rhymes. They're all in English, right? Whether you like it or not. So I can talk a little bit more about, like, why English has become a predominant language and how we can navigate that a little bit. I've worked in Indonesia and Jakarta, like, for some time, and I just want to tell you, you would be unpleasantly surprised how many children from the age of two to four, they speak no Indonesian at all. They only speak English. And there are parents in Indonesia who have to speak in English to their kids. And they can't use any Indonesian and they can't use any Chinese. If they were they're Indonesian Chinese, whatever. Why is that? Well, it comes down to what I said just now about YouTube and videos or whatever. But the main culprit of this is elitism. That's first of all.
