In a new listing of top 25 brands among children ages 6 to 12, six were media brands, including the No. 1 favorite, YouTube.

Moving up six spots from seventh place in 2015, YouTube is the first content provider to top the "BrandLove" ranking, created by an outfit called SmartyPants, a market research and consulting firm that focuses on the youth and family market.*

"YouTube is no longer competing for kids' attention, TV is,” said Michelle Poris, PhD, of Smarty Pants. “We've moved from a time where TV was always on to a time when YouTube is always a tap away.”

Nonetheless, two TV programmers were among the six loved media brands: Disney Channel, in the Top 10, and Nickelodeon, near the bottom of the listing (see chart).

Overall, media properties lagged snack food brands, which comprised a discouraging (for parents and pediatricians) 16 of the top 25, but exceeded toy brands, which appeared in the listing only three times.

*Source:SmartyPants “Brand Love” study among 8,125 households with children ages 6-12; the “Kidfinity” index is a proprietary measure of “brand awareness, love and popularity.”