Baby Shark Dance (2016) - The Story Behind Mzansi's Viral Memory
A children's campfire chant turned into the single most watched video in the history of the internet.
7.05B by late 2020
Peak views
Uploaded 17 June 2016
Date
Data Bundle Era
Era
Pinkfong (SmartStudy, South Korea)
Creator
When did it go viral?
The Baby Shark chant existed for decades in North American summer camps before Pinkfong, a South Korean education company, recorded a bright two-minute version in June 2016. The company added two child dancers, a simple hand motion for each family member, and a colour scheme built for toddlers.
It grew slowly for two years, then accelerated through a dance challenge in Southeast Asia in 2017 and 2018. By November 2020 it overtook Despacito to become the most viewed video on YouTube, a position it has never given up.
How many views when it peaked?
It reached 7.05 billion views around the time it took the number one spot in late 2020. By August 2026 the count sits above 16 billion, which is more views than there are people on earth by a factor of two.
The reason is repetition. Small children do not watch a video once. They watch it forty times, and the autoplay behaviour of tablets and phones does the rest. No adult-oriented video can compete with that pattern.
Why did South Africa love it?
In South Africa the song solved a practical problem for parents. It is short, it loops, and it holds a toddler's attention on a phone in a taxi, in a clinic queue or in a Home Affairs line. Every crèche from Bothaville to Durban has used it.
The hand actions also travel across every language spoken in Mzansi. A child who speaks only Sesotho or isiZulu can follow the whole song without a word of English, which is unusual for imported children's content and is a real part of why it stuck here.
Where is it now? (2026 status)
Pinkfong turned the song into a global business with live shows, a Nickelodeon series, toys and a feature film. The original upload is still live and still gaining roughly a billion views a year.
In 2026 Baby Shark is the permanent champion of YouTube. Nothing on the platform is realistically positioned to catch it, because no other category of viewer rewatches content the way a three-year-old does.