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Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

180 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

option 9y ago
Kids aged 2 and 3 should watch any content together with their parent. Or at the very least, the content that parent watched and approved before. No 2 or 3 year old should be mindlessly browsing Youtube
- jrs95 9y ago
  I agree. And yet, my 2 year old niece does this on a regular basis anyways.
- Donzo 9y ago
  Yeah, but how many surprise egg videos does the average parent want to watch? The videos that most children like are of a very poor quality at which most adults would cringe. I've tried to redirect my children toward more high-quality children's programming. You know, stuff with scripts and budgets. Nonetheless, they want these toy porn videos produced by these toddler whisperers. As the article begins, children crave autonomy. YouTube Kids gives it to them. It's an amazing application. I have a Google Music subscription, so my kids get to watch these videos ad-free. It's a pretty good experience for everyone.
  - option 9y ago
    Giving children autonomy is quite easy actually - parent just has to be a little inventive. For example, my 2 year old loves helping me by taking walking around with the mop, placing thing (not toys) from one box to another, etc. I wonder how good/bad those "toy porn" videos are. I don't know, hence I prefer to play it safe and follow AAP recommendations regarding screen time.
  - david-gpu 9y ago
    It's not really ad-free when the actual videos revolve around toy unboxing, is it?
  - bdamm 9y ago
    My rule is simple. At the point where my mind snaps in half because I've been hearing those surprise egg videos for far too long as background noise, "toy video" time is over, and it's time to choose another genre. I assist by selecting a new vector (robots! rockets! ponies! kid cooking videos!) and give the iPad back.
- strictnein 9y ago
  I did, and now this is permanently burned into my brain: "Daddy finger, daddy finger, where are you? Here I am, here I am, how do you do?"
  - Danihan 9y ago
    Note to self, don't spend quality time with children until they hit imprinting age, beyond dinner and reading at bedtime. ;p
    - watwut 9y ago
      Wanna cringe annoying and plain incredibly boring quotes from children books? Pretty sure I could dig some dumb kiddy book around ...
  - sremani 9y ago
    I agree with the article, this is basically anthem of "YouTube Kids".
  - pchristensen 9y ago
    You monster! Now it's back in my head!
  - throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    Daddy finger is THE most hated in all households with kids, of all time.
  - mcphage 9y ago
    Johny! Johny! Yes papa? Eating sugar? No, papa! Telling lies? No, papa! Open your mouth! Ha, ha, ha!
  - arbuge 9y ago
    Almost as bad is the one about monkeys jumping on the bed...
    - strictnein 9y ago
- drieddust 9y ago
  Agreed My daughter started behaving very aggressively. It turned out she was watching these adult enact of cartoon where characters will fight with each others. I immediately switched her to kindle fire for kids and she improved a lot. I don't like Amazon per say but there is no competition to choose from.
- tpeo 9y ago
  As much as I agree, notice that it sort of defeats the point of it all if the they have to sit there with their child. It ain't easy being a parent, a 9 to 5 worker and a household manager within a 24h schedule. If parents leave their children to do some mindless thing while unnatended, it's often because they don't have enough time to give attention to all the stuff which is immediatelly pressing them.
  - vkjv 9y ago
    > Or at the very least, the content that parent watched and approved before. In my experience, kids are willing to watch the same content many, many more times than an adult. This makes this strategy reasonable.
    - sharemywin 9y ago
      if they had an opt in that would be great but pretty sure its all opt out.
      - mipmap04 9y ago
        This would be a pretty easy service to write, however. Adding it to the list of projects I need to eventually get to!
  - tobbe2064 9y ago
    You don't actually need to distract them. It's important for them to learn that there is shit that needs to be done and there are periods of boredom.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    We just have a fire tv with a pin. Each show and between each episode, they bring the remote to us and we decide if they (we) need another PJMasks or not. We also have a kindle which has a very good kids mode. We can set the number of minutes allowed for certain tasks 30min/day video, 20 min/day games, unlimited books. We can also explicitly set the content that is available in that mode. Which means once that's done, I can hand it to them and have a full 50 minutes to cook or clean or what ever I need to do without worrying about access to apps or youtube. One of my favorite parts about it all is that my kids have been taking selfies, pictures and videos of each other. They are up into the thousands. They put on hats and shoot little films of them jumping off the bed. They interview their uncles, and make cooking and painting shows. There's a lot of really cool things they do if you limit the non interactive, blob mode of the devices.
- Raphmedia 9y ago
  Have a look at Youtube Kids (https://kids.youtube.com/ https://kids.youtube.com/)
  - option 9y ago
    Great tool for a parent. Make sure you have a look at AAP recommendations for screen time.
  - cpach 9y ago
    Looks interesting. How well does this app prevent weird/disturbing/bad videos?
    - Raphmedia 9y ago
      "Videos available in the app are determined by a mix of algorithmic filtering, user input and human review. " https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172307?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6130504 https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172307?hl=en-...
      - cpach 9y ago
        Yeah, I was curious if anyone has experience with how well that works in practice.
    - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
      I've been using it since launch and think it works as advertised, not only in cutting out the weird stuff but in actively directing the child to educational content. It also has a timer built in, and when the time runs out an animated face shows up and "goes to sleep" which is incredibly effective in avoiding a tantrum when screen time is up.
      - cpach 9y ago
        Cool! Will probably install it soon.
    - 9y ago
- sharemywin 9y ago
  I try to watch everything my kids watch.
  - option 9y ago
    I am raising my own kids and I am terrified of the amount and quality of videos I see very little kids watch all the time. Of course, I am not an authority for other parents, but I hope AAP (American association of apediatrics) is.
deleted 9y ago
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RichardHeart 9y ago
Guess who they sell this awesome traffic to......I lost $1000 to this garbage. Every possible demographic option was enabled to prevent this from happening. Even better, foreign language learn your ABC's!
- ssharp 9y ago
  My kids were a little under 2 heading into election season. We watched very little television at that age but there was one YouTube show that would really help calm down one of them. Pretty much every time we watched that, we got a Trump ad. Yay living in Ohio! Thankfully they've taken to some PBS shows like Daniel Tiger and Thomas, so they're usually content with that and we generally don't watch them on YouTube, so there isn't an recommended content. One time, I did put up a Thomas YouTube video on one screen with on of my sons in my lap, while I finished up 10 minutes worth of work on the other screen. That's how we got sucked into the "Bob the Train" vortex. Not good.
  - ashark 9y ago
    > Thankfully they've taken to some PBS shows like Daniel Tiger and Thomas I recommend tracking down some old-school Mister Rogers' Neighborhood if you can. Totally engages my 4-year-old, and she actually talks to him when prompted, which she does with no other children's show. The pace is sedate and the shots long (like, really long, in a way I didn't appreciate as a kid—that had to be difficult to film). They make Thomas and Daniel Tiger and most of the rest of the PBS lineup seem like Ren & Stimpy by comparison.
    - jackhack 9y ago
      All television from the 60s and 70s had extremely long shots by today's standards. Just for fun pick any show on any channel with modern content. Drama, comedy, even news broadcasts -- the average shot duration is only 3.5 seconds. SECONDS! Not only that, but the weird camera angles, and the infuriating "shakey cam" (handled camera being purposely jiggled) is predominant in children's programming, and used to keep our ever-decreasing focus. (It's a wonder that children today can focus long enough to ever read a single paragraph.) Now, for comparison, watch an episode of Andy Griffith, or I Love Lucy, and marvel that one camera shot might be 3 minutes long.
corysama 9y ago
In the past couple of years there has been a huge uptick in YT content targeting very young children. The feedback loop is so tight that many of the creators have converged on designing some of the most visceral (and disturbing) material that appeals to kids at a reptilian level. Think about how genuinely weird little kids are. Sometimes they do stuff that would be scary if it wasn't just a minute of innocent pretend and a toy. Stuff like kidnapping each other or performing surgery on each other. Well, now there are hundreds of thousands of YT videos illustrating that kind of material in fine detail. Many of them have millions of views. This site [1] has a good collection of screenshots of what I'm referring to. Unfortunately, it's such a heavyweight site that AdBlock is practically required just to open the page. [1] https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/something-is-terribly-wrong-with-many-kids-videos-on-youtube/ https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/something-is-terribl... "Warning: This article contains disturbing images … although they’re all taken from children’s videos." If your children are watching YouTube, make sure they are doing it only when and where you are able to see what they are watching.
- thatswrong0 9y ago
  I noticed this myself watching my friends young cousin browse Youtube.. his feed was half clickbait 20-something white guys yelling at you to subscribe Minecraft videos, half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article. If I ever have kids, there's no way in hell I'm letting them run free with an iPad or iPhone. I know it's the "easy way out" to distract your kids at the dinner table, but I can't help but feel like it's bad for their mental development. Then again, I was part of the first generation that grew up with the modern internet and am decently well adjusted despite being exposed to weird content at a young age. Hm.
  - bdamm 9y ago
    You may make a different choice after years of being unable to do anything but give 100% of your attention to the child. Someone needs to cook & clean, or go to work, after all. In the "old days" you'd just cut your kid loose into the environment. Well, these days, TV and iPads are part of the environment, and YouTube along with it. I'm not saying you wouldn't make boundaries. Boundaries are important. But that may also include a certain amount of time of letting the child "run free" with the iPad.
ashark 9y ago
Are there any good medium- to long-form recent works with valuable insight into the modern phenomenon of hyper-availble multimedia? Psychological, sociological, political effects, any of that? I'm reading DFW's part-literature-review part-independent-thesis "E Unibus Pluram"[1] and read his "Host" a little while back, and find myself wanting more recent examinations/criticism of our media culture of similar quality. [1] https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (I don't know whether this is the same as the version collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again)
- defen 9y ago
  The eponymous Infinite Jest in the DFW book of the same name is a piece of content (film) so compelling that people watch it over and over until they die.
fufonzo 9y ago
Ya, on my iPad, I've hidden YouTube from my daughter (3.5 years old) because of the garbage that's on there. I find Netflix kids to be pretty good. I haven't really seen anything on there that I really disapproved of (some of them I tell her that I prefer she doesn't watch it - mostly because of the consumerism and materialist content, like in Barbie - , and she's pretty good at listening to me). She also has a couple of games on there that she can play. But ya, the YouTube stuff is absolute trash.
- bdamm 9y ago
  Netflix is great. Even better is "PBS Kids" series of apps, including "PBS Video" and "PBS Games". 3 and 4-yr old approved. Also work checking out is "PBS Parents".
OmarIsmail 9y ago
This is why I don't let my kid watch YouTube unattended. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime offer more than enough content for them. If there's only something available on YouTube then I'll find a playlist with only that content and let them watch that. YouTube's random suggestions is a killer for kids. The first time I happened upon a "Lego unboxing" video I knew exactly what was going on and realized the danger of it.
Theodores 9y ago
I grew up with 3 channels and an analogue black and white TV that died after an hour due to thermal runaway. Unsupervised daytime viewing did not happen. Putting on the TV when the parents were out in the day was tantamount to drinking spirits for breakfast, or that is how it felt, as if we had nothing to do. Back then the recommendation engine was your friends and you would talk about 'Life on Earth's or whatever else was the main presentation on TV the night before. Everyone was on the same page so you could not ruin life for box set types. In that framework you had to pay attention and understand the nuances of the story. If you didn't then you would not be in on convo and you would miss out. So you learned stuff. If you only had two hours of time in front of a screen you were focused on the programming and it may have been what your parents want to watch, e.g. current affairs or drama. There was definitely an aspect of education to it. I did not get all the channels or the colours that my contemporaries from other regions did so there is a 50% gap in my TV education, so I don't pick up on references to a lot of stuff, yet that shared culture is a good thing, humanising. The stuff I miss out on, it is like not being on Facebook. The stuff YouTube are doing is wonderful but I wonder if we need to be trained into this solitary rather than shared viewing. The sharing in conversation was important to me.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
You see such things as the following. You'll find a video that teaches colors.. harmless you say? No, because the different colors are really an Advert for Lays Brand Potato chips. Teaching a child colors, using different colors of different flavors of Lays potato chips should not be allowed on any kids platform and should be regulated. I think this sort of advertising is disgusting.
jpalomaki 9y ago
We wonder why kids watch the same content over and over again, but are we any different? I can admit to listening few musical pieces quite many times and still enjoy them. Same applies to well done (standup) comedy clips, somehow they don't loose their value in my eyes even though I know exactly what will happen.
martinaparicio 9y ago
I was reading this article and viewing the videos while at work. I'm a 25 years old looking at a video of three little girls playing, while in a meeting. I'm sure now I'm the perv of the office now.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  I mean, people in offices often feed their kids by turning up in offices. Some of those people even like kids, and sometimes, they even see instagrams, and /r/daddit photos/videos of other peoples kids. And even more then that, sometimes seeing someone who is happy with their kids, or kids that are happy also makes them happy. kids + adults =/= perv
- watwut 9y ago
  It is wrong that a dude who watch video about kids or enjoys their company has to worry about that.
deleted 9y ago
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dogruck 9y ago
I think Starfall.com's content is a superior, safe alternative to YouTube for kids.
utefan001 9y ago
This is how my 11 year old daughter uses YouTube now... After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. In order to fix that she has to do 5 Khan problems or read thoery.com, Duolingo, prodigy math, code monkey, splash math, Xtra math, or typing club. It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube, etc. Best result so far is she now understands how fast 30 mins goes by and has no interest in watching YouTube all afternoon. I have spent ton of time and resources on this last 12 months. We are releasing new beta in 2 weeks. DNSLearning.org. Do Not Stop Learning.
- spraak 9y ago
  Yes! I've been doing similar manual/analog solutions but it's hard to keep up with
  - deleted 9y ago
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- 24gttghh 9y ago
  This looks very cool, I'm gonna get at least one of my friend's with kids to try this!
- dev1n 9y ago
  This is an awesome product and congratulations for sticking to this for 12 months. How have you been trying to market it? What marketing avenues have you been trying? Facebook ads etc?
  - utefanoo1 9y ago
    Marketing plan is evolving. Issue we ran into in January is so many non tech parents stuggled to configure DNS. We hoped to avoid the walled app gardens at first, but only having to install the app to configure is important. I watched poverty inc documentary and saw how parents with some money in Haiti spent money on private school for children. I believe, thanks to khan etc, great education already exist, parents just need innovative tools to help keep children on proper path. I reached out to some orphanages / schools in Haiti and they are excited to try this out once android app is complete.
alexc05 9y ago
I absolutely loathe youtube's suggestion stream. It is clearly designed to be exploitative of children's media-illiteracy. Clickbait, misleading and outright deception in the headlines and thumbnails. For lack of a better term "trend-whoring" (a couple weeks back, a number of the video game streams suddenly had fidget spinners in all their thumnails) I'm planning (hoping) on becoming a parent in a couple years, and it makes me really appreciate the regulations imposed on television regulators. Or the trust I'd have subscribing to a paid content service. Youtube's suggested content feed often feels like dredging through bottom feeding sludge. And that's as an adult! I couldn't imagine subjecting children to that. I often feel that way about AMP suggestions on my phone, though it isn't quite as bad, it sometimes goes really crazy. I'm happy to read the rest of the parent-comments in this thread though, I'd love to hear what the rest of you with a bit more experience do.
- deleted 9y ago
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throwaway919191 9y ago
This is something that has bothered me lately with YouTube. As the article explains, tends to be inappropriate, sexual or mischievous. However not only that they tend to be cheaply made or make egregious copyright violations, most of which barely pass as "educational content" because they a child shouts the name of the color every minute or so. What really bothers me however, is this type of content tends to be some of the most watched content on YouTube outside of music videos. For example, to give some context on YouTube performance, in the last 2 weeks, the most watched video on YT (according to our systems) was 'Luis Fonsi - Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee' with 300M views, #10 was 'DJ Khaled - Wild Thoughts ft. Rihanna, Bryson Tiller' with ~70M views. I think everyone would agree this type of content is well recognized in pop culture. Kids "content" starts up at #29 with 'Сrying Babies Accident! Bad Baby Playing Doctor and Learn Colors with Bandage / Nursery Rhymes Songs' (http://youtu.be/b6B0pt_dhe0 http://youtu.be/b6B0pt_dhe0) with ~40M views. This isn't "niche content" nor is the spread of it limited. "Сrying Babies Accident" is more well produced than the other videos I've come across but still has same traits - the same stock sounds, the same stock music, intercut with 10 second "educational" content where the a child yells out the name of a color (see 2:40). This video 'Learn Colors With Soccer Balls for Children' (http://youtu.be/OY7ILLGvAJk http://youtu.be/OY7ILLGvAJk), exhibit more of the common 'yt kids content genre'. Again the same focus on learning 'colors' (I've yet to see content that teaches something other than colors), but now you can see the recurring characters of this genre, name Spiderman, the Hulk, and Elsa. I doubt any of this content is licensed by Disney, but the guys behind this are likely making millions. My absolute favorite has to be 'THE BOSS BABY Learning Color Funny Videos - Learn Colors For Kids Best Moments Tim And The Boss' (youtu.be/gZVFKXt5WeQ), which is just a clip from the movie Boss Baby. It starts off normal until the final scene where it pauses and a child yells the name of the color. What happens next is strange - the entire scene tint shifts (for example the main characters body is blue), the clip plays again and a child yells a different color (~10M views in the past week). For fun, the most interesting I've seen is 'Superhero Gamezone' (http://youtu.be/amrkiS1Bjao http://youtu.be/amrkiS1Bjao) - while many of these videos have "older" characters that act out Spiderman and Elsa, this is the only popular one where a full grown man acts like a toddler with his son. No colors in this one, but the same Spiderman/Hulk characters along with the exaggerated facial expressions. A lot of children watch this content. I can't pass any judgement on whether its good or not, but to me, the obsession with this content is strange.
cjf101 9y ago
Have you seen the 2hour+ looping video phenomenon? My friends children introduced me to this. Their favourite videos are extended looping videos of the same 1-minute content. Songs, or funny moments, whatever. Their favourite YouTube activity is to see the same thing over and over and over for hours. They react nearly the same way to the same thing for the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it, but their recommender feed was full of them. I guess the algorithm works. The article hints at this, but doesn't really point it out, when they talk about children living to see the same kind of thing repeatedly, to try and figure it out. I'd be really curious to see if this actually helps the learning brain, or hijacks it, preventing deeper understanding through varied examples.
- wcummings 9y ago
  Jeez, that is kinda concerning, how old are your friends kids?
  - cjf101 9y ago
    5 - 8. I was concerned at first. But there's so many of these on YouTube that have pretty high view counts, that my worry pretty quickly went from "my friend's kids are weird" to "kids are weird".
    - danbolt 9y ago
      This kind of reminds me of having a few favourite VHS tapes and watching them over and over as a little kid. I used to think it was disconcerting, but I also had peers that did the same and turned out alright, so I wonder if it's part of figuring out stimulus/work/gratification/reward/effort as a child and eventually growing into an adult.
- ryanchoi 9y ago
  Wow. I've seen these on my feed and was sure (until now) that they were just jokes. Or maybe they are, and young kids just react differently.
scandox 9y ago
I have a 5 year old and a two year old and I've absolutely banned unwrapping videos. They are like heroin. With cartoons they'd watch and be disappointed if we ended them. With this more addictive content my older kid would become aggressive and highly agitated if we stopped them.
sleazybae 9y ago
I read one of the first sentences of one of the paragraphs as "Kids’ videos are among the most wretched content in YouTube history," and went "well, yeah, Spiderman and Elsa and all that weird shit." Then I reread it properly and realized it said "watched content," and went, "yeah, that makes more sense, but it's definitely some of the worst stuff on the internet.
j_s 9y ago
I'm late to the party, but any advice on shutting down YouTube in the home at the router. I need an on/off button on my phone!
- laxk 9y ago
  One solution is to use a chromecast device (or similar devices), you can control everything(content, amount of time) from your phone.
mncharity 9y ago
I wonder if some of these formats might be leveraged for informal science education content? For instance, there was a play-doh egg surprise with a lego doctor figure with a stethoscope. Imagine instead an egg surprise with a real stethoscope (and maybe the figure and/or say a real egg with an inked on scope). Then show kindergarten kids using stethoscopes (it's a thing). Build associations between heartbeat sounds, wrist and apex palpation, the flashing heart icon of blood pressure machines and fitness apps, ECG, hr, hr vs time graphs, and so on. Include a clip of an N-yard dash and cool down, with with heart sounds, flashing icon, and hr graph. Hr sounds for sleeping person, walking, running or climbing stairs. For resting infant, kid, adult. And for mouse, cat, small dog, big dog, human, horse, whale. It's fun to see dogs and horses anyway, but why not take the opportunity to add heart stuff and hint at scaling laws too? The videos linked to from the article didn't seem odd choices. They seemed to have rich and fun "learning about the world" content.
- luca_ing 9y ago
  Good idea. But judging by my son's behaviour he would just select the next video once the "boring" educational content starts :-(
  - mncharity 9y ago
    > once the "boring" educational content starts Imagine a cartoon about a kid playing with a doll. Cartoon creators know a lot about related topics, like life skills, social dynamics, fashion, etc. And so they can seamlessly integrate bits of those rich domains of expertise into the cartoon. The OP cartoon bear video covers a lot of ground. But now imagine a cartoon about a kid playing with a puddle. Cartoon creators know very little about puddles. Almost nothing of their physics, biology, chemistry, geology, engineering, and so on. No clue - stomp, laugh, mess. So science doesn't get the integrated and engaging storytelling which those other topics do. But there seems no fundamental reason it can't. Except... searching for videos is painful. Even when you know a video exists, it's often implausible to find. Using google and bing video search to find bits of educational content, feels like searching the web circa early AltaVista - one stop among several, all of very limited effectiveness. FWIW, here's a big stinky whale heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnKuw7Wvz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnKuw7Wvz4 hoisted for display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4JIwlkUdEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4JIwlkUdEs . A kid demoing a heart rate app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOjWmA_7yUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOjWmA_7yUc , and taking a stress test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCS_6ixfq8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCS_6ixfq8U . A fetal hr app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XaYl6RJVsc&start=13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XaYl6RJVsc&start=13 . A rabbit hr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLFLDszTYA&start=50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLFLDszTYA&start=50 . A boring video of an interactive heart anatomy app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLyXWjWcQtc&start=65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLyXWjWcQtc&start=65 , to illustrate that VR/AR has the potential to massively disrupt education. A boring exhibit with some hearts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QthT9bs8Tws&start=15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QthT9bs8Tws&start=15 . There are very many videos on stethoscope use, variously flawed. Which is great for assembling piles of Fair Use clips, but not so good for linking here. And... out of time. So to reframe my original question: I wonder if youtube kids viral video formats might be used for outreach... but the cost of creation could be prohibitively large. Though there might be low hanging fruit, like a play-do egg surprise, filled with water, or bubble foam, or jello, or liquid nitrogen, or hydrogen, or... Thanks for your comment. I was(am?) considering an education project, but was clearly doing selective memory on just how massively time consuming it would be.
fil_a_del_fee_a 9y ago
A majority of these videos have the same recurring Disney / Marvel characters. I have a VERY STRONG suspicion these videos ARE sponsored by these very companies. There is no way they would allow these videos to get 100+ MILLION views if they weren't behind it. Regular people get fined and/or arrested for copyright infringement and/or pirating content all the time.

180 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

Kids aged 2 and 3 should watch any content together with their parent. Or at the very least, the content that parent watched and approved before. No 2 or 3 year old should be mindlessly browsing Youtube

jrs95 9y ago
I agree. And yet, my 2 year old niece does this on a regular basis anyways.
Donzo 9y ago
Yeah, but how many surprise egg videos does the average parent want to watch? The videos that most children like are of a very poor quality at which most adults would cringe. I've tried to redirect my children toward more high-quality children's programming. You know, stuff with scripts and budgets. Nonetheless, they want these toy porn videos produced by these toddler whisperers. As the article begins, children crave autonomy. YouTube Kids gives it to them. It's an amazing application. I have a Google Music subscription, so my kids get to watch these videos ad-free. It's a pretty good experience for everyone.
- option 9y ago
  Giving children autonomy is quite easy actually - parent just has to be a little inventive. For example, my 2 year old loves helping me by taking walking around with the mop, placing thing (not toys) from one box to another, etc. I wonder how good/bad those "toy porn" videos are. I don't know, hence I prefer to play it safe and follow AAP recommendations regarding screen time.
- david-gpu 9y ago
  It's not really ad-free when the actual videos revolve around toy unboxing, is it?
- bdamm 9y ago
  My rule is simple. At the point where my mind snaps in half because I've been hearing those surprise egg videos for far too long as background noise, "toy video" time is over, and it's time to choose another genre. I assist by selecting a new vector (robots! rockets! ponies! kid cooking videos!) and give the iPad back.
strictnein 9y ago
I did, and now this is permanently burned into my brain: "Daddy finger, daddy finger, where are you? Here I am, here I am, how do you do?"
- Danihan 9y ago
  Note to self, don't spend quality time with children until they hit imprinting age, beyond dinner and reading at bedtime. ;p
  - watwut 9y ago
    Wanna cringe annoying and plain incredibly boring quotes from children books? Pretty sure I could dig some dumb kiddy book around ...
- sremani 9y ago
  I agree with the article, this is basically anthem of "YouTube Kids".
- pchristensen 9y ago
  You monster! Now it's back in my head!
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Daddy finger is THE most hated in all households with kids, of all time.
- mcphage 9y ago
  Johny! Johny! Yes papa? Eating sugar? No, papa! Telling lies? No, papa! Open your mouth! Ha, ha, ha!
- arbuge 9y ago
  Almost as bad is the one about monkeys jumping on the bed...
  - strictnein 9y ago
drieddust 9y ago
Agreed My daughter started behaving very aggressively. It turned out she was watching these adult enact of cartoon where characters will fight with each others. I immediately switched her to kindle fire for kids and she improved a lot. I don't like Amazon per say but there is no competition to choose from.
tpeo 9y ago
As much as I agree, notice that it sort of defeats the point of it all if the they have to sit there with their child. It ain't easy being a parent, a 9 to 5 worker and a household manager within a 24h schedule. If parents leave their children to do some mindless thing while unnatended, it's often because they don't have enough time to give attention to all the stuff which is immediatelly pressing them.
- vkjv 9y ago
  > Or at the very least, the content that parent watched and approved before. In my experience, kids are willing to watch the same content many, many more times than an adult. This makes this strategy reasonable.
  - sharemywin 9y ago
    if they had an opt in that would be great but pretty sure its all opt out.
    - mipmap04 9y ago
      This would be a pretty easy service to write, however. Adding it to the list of projects I need to eventually get to!
- tobbe2064 9y ago
  You don't actually need to distract them. It's important for them to learn that there is shit that needs to be done and there are periods of boredom.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  We just have a fire tv with a pin. Each show and between each episode, they bring the remote to us and we decide if they (we) need another PJMasks or not. We also have a kindle which has a very good kids mode. We can set the number of minutes allowed for certain tasks 30min/day video, 20 min/day games, unlimited books. We can also explicitly set the content that is available in that mode. Which means once that's done, I can hand it to them and have a full 50 minutes to cook or clean or what ever I need to do without worrying about access to apps or youtube. One of my favorite parts about it all is that my kids have been taking selfies, pictures and videos of each other. They are up into the thousands. They put on hats and shoot little films of them jumping off the bed. They interview their uncles, and make cooking and painting shows. There's a lot of really cool things they do if you limit the non interactive, blob mode of the devices.
Raphmedia 9y ago
Have a look at Youtube Kids (https://kids.youtube.com/ https://kids.youtube.com/)
- option 9y ago
  Great tool for a parent. Make sure you have a look at AAP recommendations for screen time.
- cpach 9y ago
  Looks interesting. How well does this app prevent weird/disturbing/bad videos?
  - Raphmedia 9y ago
    "Videos available in the app are determined by a mix of algorithmic filtering, user input and human review. " https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172307?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=6130504 https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172307?hl=en-...
    - cpach 9y ago
      Yeah, I was curious if anyone has experience with how well that works in practice.
  - ZeroGravitas 9y ago
    I've been using it since launch and think it works as advertised, not only in cutting out the weird stuff but in actively directing the child to educational content. It also has a timer built in, and when the time runs out an animated face shows up and "goes to sleep" which is incredibly effective in avoiding a tantrum when screen time is up.
    - cpach 9y ago
      Cool! Will probably install it soon.
  - 9y ago
sharemywin 9y ago
I try to watch everything my kids watch.
- option 9y ago
  I am raising my own kids and I am terrified of the amount and quality of videos I see very little kids watch all the time. Of course, I am not an authority for other parents, but I hope AAP (American association of apediatrics) is.

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RichardHeart 9y ago

Guess who they sell this awesome traffic to......I lost $1000 to this garbage. Every possible demographic option was enabled to prevent this from happening. Even better, foreign language learn your ABC's!

ssharp 9y ago
My kids were a little under 2 heading into election season. We watched very little television at that age but there was one YouTube show that would really help calm down one of them. Pretty much every time we watched that, we got a Trump ad. Yay living in Ohio! Thankfully they've taken to some PBS shows like Daniel Tiger and Thomas, so they're usually content with that and we generally don't watch them on YouTube, so there isn't an recommended content. One time, I did put up a Thomas YouTube video on one screen with on of my sons in my lap, while I finished up 10 minutes worth of work on the other screen. That's how we got sucked into the "Bob the Train" vortex. Not good.
- ashark 9y ago
  > Thankfully they've taken to some PBS shows like Daniel Tiger and Thomas I recommend tracking down some old-school Mister Rogers' Neighborhood if you can. Totally engages my 4-year-old, and she actually talks to him when prompted, which she does with no other children's show. The pace is sedate and the shots long (like, really long, in a way I didn't appreciate as a kid—that had to be difficult to film). They make Thomas and Daniel Tiger and most of the rest of the PBS lineup seem like Ren & Stimpy by comparison.
  - jackhack 9y ago
    All television from the 60s and 70s had extremely long shots by today's standards. Just for fun pick any show on any channel with modern content. Drama, comedy, even news broadcasts -- the average shot duration is only 3.5 seconds. SECONDS! Not only that, but the weird camera angles, and the infuriating "shakey cam" (handled camera being purposely jiggled) is predominant in children's programming, and used to keep our ever-decreasing focus. (It's a wonder that children today can focus long enough to ever read a single paragraph.) Now, for comparison, watch an episode of Andy Griffith, or I Love Lucy, and marvel that one camera shot might be 3 minutes long.

corysama 9y ago

In the past couple of years there has been a huge uptick in YT content targeting very young children. The feedback loop is so tight that many of the creators have converged on designing some of the most visceral (and disturbing) material that appeals to kids at a reptilian level. Think about how genuinely weird little kids are. Sometimes they do stuff that would be scary if it wasn't just a minute of innocent pretend and a toy. Stuff like kidnapping each other or performing surgery on each other. Well, now there are hundreds of thousands of YT videos illustrating that kind of material in fine detail. Many of them have millions of views. This site [1] has a good collection of screenshots of what I'm referring to. Unfortunately, it's such a heavyweight site that AdBlock is practically required just to open the page. [1] https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/something-is-terribly-wrong-with-many-kids-videos-on-youtube/ https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/something-is-terribl... "Warning: This article contains disturbing images … although they’re all taken from children’s videos." If your children are watching YouTube, make sure they are doing it only when and where you are able to see what they are watching.

thatswrong0 9y ago
I noticed this myself watching my friends young cousin browse Youtube.. his feed was half clickbait 20-something white guys yelling at you to subscribe Minecraft videos, half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article. If I ever have kids, there's no way in hell I'm letting them run free with an iPad or iPhone. I know it's the "easy way out" to distract your kids at the dinner table, but I can't help but feel like it's bad for their mental development. Then again, I was part of the first generation that grew up with the modern internet and am decently well adjusted despite being exposed to weird content at a young age. Hm.
- bdamm 9y ago
  You may make a different choice after years of being unable to do anything but give 100% of your attention to the child. Someone needs to cook & clean, or go to work, after all. In the "old days" you'd just cut your kid loose into the environment. Well, these days, TV and iPads are part of the environment, and YouTube along with it. I'm not saying you wouldn't make boundaries. Boundaries are important. But that may also include a certain amount of time of letting the child "run free" with the iPad.

ashark 9y ago

Are there any good medium- to long-form recent works with valuable insight into the modern phenomenon of hyper-availble multimedia? Psychological, sociological, political effects, any of that? I'm reading DFW's part-literature-review part-independent-thesis "E Unibus Pluram"[1] and read his "Host" a little while back, and find myself wanting more recent examinations/criticism of our media culture of similar quality. [1] https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf (I don't know whether this is the same as the version collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again)

defen 9y ago
The eponymous Infinite Jest in the DFW book of the same name is a piece of content (film) so compelling that people watch it over and over until they die.

fufonzo 9y ago

Ya, on my iPad, I've hidden YouTube from my daughter (3.5 years old) because of the garbage that's on there. I find Netflix kids to be pretty good. I haven't really seen anything on there that I really disapproved of (some of them I tell her that I prefer she doesn't watch it - mostly because of the consumerism and materialist content, like in Barbie - , and she's pretty good at listening to me). She also has a couple of games on there that she can play. But ya, the YouTube stuff is absolute trash.

bdamm 9y ago
Netflix is great. Even better is "PBS Kids" series of apps, including "PBS Video" and "PBS Games". 3 and 4-yr old approved. Also work checking out is "PBS Parents".

OmarIsmail 9y ago

This is why I don't let my kid watch YouTube unattended. Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime offer more than enough content for them. If there's only something available on YouTube then I'll find a playlist with only that content and let them watch that. YouTube's random suggestions is a killer for kids. The first time I happened upon a "Lego unboxing" video I knew exactly what was going on and realized the danger of it.

Theodores 9y ago

I grew up with 3 channels and an analogue black and white TV that died after an hour due to thermal runaway. Unsupervised daytime viewing did not happen. Putting on the TV when the parents were out in the day was tantamount to drinking spirits for breakfast, or that is how it felt, as if we had nothing to do. Back then the recommendation engine was your friends and you would talk about 'Life on Earth's or whatever else was the main presentation on TV the night before. Everyone was on the same page so you could not ruin life for box set types. In that framework you had to pay attention and understand the nuances of the story. If you didn't then you would not be in on convo and you would miss out. So you learned stuff. If you only had two hours of time in front of a screen you were focused on the programming and it may have been what your parents want to watch, e.g. current affairs or drama. There was definitely an aspect of education to it. I did not get all the channels or the colours that my contemporaries from other regions did so there is a 50% gap in my TV education, so I don't pick up on references to a lot of stuff, yet that shared culture is a good thing, humanising. The stuff I miss out on, it is like not being on Facebook. The stuff YouTube are doing is wonderful but I wonder if we need to be trained into this solitary rather than shared viewing. The sharing in conversation was important to me.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

You see such things as the following. You'll find a video that teaches colors.. harmless you say? No, because the different colors are really an Advert for Lays Brand Potato chips. Teaching a child colors, using different colors of different flavors of Lays potato chips should not be allowed on any kids platform and should be regulated. I think this sort of advertising is disgusting.

jpalomaki 9y ago

We wonder why kids watch the same content over and over again, but are we any different? I can admit to listening few musical pieces quite many times and still enjoy them. Same applies to well done (standup) comedy clips, somehow they don't loose their value in my eyes even though I know exactly what will happen.

martinaparicio 9y ago

I was reading this article and viewing the videos while at work. I'm a 25 years old looking at a video of three little girls playing, while in a meeting. I'm sure now I'm the perv of the office now.

jethro_tell 9y ago
I mean, people in offices often feed their kids by turning up in offices. Some of those people even like kids, and sometimes, they even see instagrams, and /r/daddit photos/videos of other peoples kids. And even more then that, sometimes seeing someone who is happy with their kids, or kids that are happy also makes them happy. kids + adults =/= perv
watwut 9y ago
It is wrong that a dude who watch video about kids or enjoys their company has to worry about that.

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dogruck 9y ago

I think Starfall.com's content is a superior, safe alternative to YouTube for kids.

utefan001 9y ago

This is how my 11 year old daughter uses YouTube now... After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. In order to fix that she has to do 5 Khan problems or read thoery.com, Duolingo, prodigy math, code monkey, splash math, Xtra math, or typing club. It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube, etc. Best result so far is she now understands how fast 30 mins goes by and has no interest in watching YouTube all afternoon. I have spent ton of time and resources on this last 12 months. We are releasing new beta in 2 weeks. DNSLearning.org. Do Not Stop Learning.

spraak 9y ago
Yes! I've been doing similar manual/analog solutions but it's hard to keep up with
- deleted 9y ago
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24gttghh 9y ago
This looks very cool, I'm gonna get at least one of my friend's with kids to try this!
dev1n 9y ago
This is an awesome product and congratulations for sticking to this for 12 months. How have you been trying to market it? What marketing avenues have you been trying? Facebook ads etc?
- utefanoo1 9y ago
  Marketing plan is evolving. Issue we ran into in January is so many non tech parents stuggled to configure DNS. We hoped to avoid the walled app gardens at first, but only having to install the app to configure is important. I watched poverty inc documentary and saw how parents with some money in Haiti spent money on private school for children. I believe, thanks to khan etc, great education already exist, parents just need innovative tools to help keep children on proper path. I reached out to some orphanages / schools in Haiti and they are excited to try this out once android app is complete.

alexc05 9y ago

I absolutely loathe youtube's suggestion stream. It is clearly designed to be exploitative of children's media-illiteracy. Clickbait, misleading and outright deception in the headlines and thumbnails. For lack of a better term "trend-whoring" (a couple weeks back, a number of the video game streams suddenly had fidget spinners in all their thumnails) I'm planning (hoping) on becoming a parent in a couple years, and it makes me really appreciate the regulations imposed on television regulators. Or the trust I'd have subscribing to a paid content service. Youtube's suggested content feed often feels like dredging through bottom feeding sludge. And that's as an adult! I couldn't imagine subjecting children to that. I often feel that way about AMP suggestions on my phone, though it isn't quite as bad, it sometimes goes really crazy. I'm happy to read the rest of the parent-comments in this thread though, I'd love to hear what the rest of you with a bit more experience do.

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throwaway919191 9y ago

This is something that has bothered me lately with YouTube. As the article explains, tends to be inappropriate, sexual or mischievous. However not only that they tend to be cheaply made or make egregious copyright violations, most of which barely pass as "educational content" because they a child shouts the name of the color every minute or so. What really bothers me however, is this type of content tends to be some of the most watched content on YouTube outside of music videos. For example, to give some context on YouTube performance, in the last 2 weeks, the most watched video on YT (according to our systems) was 'Luis Fonsi - Despacito ft. Daddy Yankee' with 300M views, #10 was 'DJ Khaled - Wild Thoughts ft. Rihanna, Bryson Tiller' with ~70M views. I think everyone would agree this type of content is well recognized in pop culture. Kids "content" starts up at #29 with 'Сrying Babies Accident! Bad Baby Playing Doctor and Learn Colors with Bandage / Nursery Rhymes Songs' (http://youtu.be/b6B0pt_dhe0 http://youtu.be/b6B0pt_dhe0) with ~40M views. This isn't "niche content" nor is the spread of it limited. "Сrying Babies Accident" is more well produced than the other videos I've come across but still has same traits - the same stock sounds, the same stock music, intercut with 10 second "educational" content where the a child yells out the name of a color (see 2:40). This video 'Learn Colors With Soccer Balls for Children' (http://youtu.be/OY7ILLGvAJk http://youtu.be/OY7ILLGvAJk), exhibit more of the common 'yt kids content genre'. Again the same focus on learning 'colors' (I've yet to see content that teaches something other than colors), but now you can see the recurring characters of this genre, name Spiderman, the Hulk, and Elsa. I doubt any of this content is licensed by Disney, but the guys behind this are likely making millions. My absolute favorite has to be 'THE BOSS BABY Learning Color Funny Videos - Learn Colors For Kids Best Moments Tim And The Boss' (youtu.be/gZVFKXt5WeQ), which is just a clip from the movie Boss Baby. It starts off normal until the final scene where it pauses and a child yells the name of the color. What happens next is strange - the entire scene tint shifts (for example the main characters body is blue), the clip plays again and a child yells a different color (~10M views in the past week). For fun, the most interesting I've seen is 'Superhero Gamezone' (http://youtu.be/amrkiS1Bjao http://youtu.be/amrkiS1Bjao) - while many of these videos have "older" characters that act out Spiderman and Elsa, this is the only popular one where a full grown man acts like a toddler with his son. No colors in this one, but the same Spiderman/Hulk characters along with the exaggerated facial expressions. A lot of children watch this content. I can't pass any judgement on whether its good or not, but to me, the obsession with this content is strange.

cjf101 9y ago

Have you seen the 2hour+ looping video phenomenon? My friends children introduced me to this. Their favourite videos are extended looping videos of the same 1-minute content. Songs, or funny moments, whatever. Their favourite YouTube activity is to see the same thing over and over and over for hours. They react nearly the same way to the same thing for the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it, but their recommender feed was full of them. I guess the algorithm works. The article hints at this, but doesn't really point it out, when they talk about children living to see the same kind of thing repeatedly, to try and figure it out. I'd be really curious to see if this actually helps the learning brain, or hijacks it, preventing deeper understanding through varied examples.

wcummings 9y ago
Jeez, that is kinda concerning, how old are your friends kids?
- cjf101 9y ago
  5 - 8. I was concerned at first. But there's so many of these on YouTube that have pretty high view counts, that my worry pretty quickly went from "my friend's kids are weird" to "kids are weird".
  - danbolt 9y ago
    This kind of reminds me of having a few favourite VHS tapes and watching them over and over as a little kid. I used to think it was disconcerting, but I also had peers that did the same and turned out alright, so I wonder if it's part of figuring out stimulus/work/gratification/reward/effort as a child and eventually growing into an adult.
ryanchoi 9y ago
Wow. I've seen these on my feed and was sure (until now) that they were just jokes. Or maybe they are, and young kids just react differently.

scandox 9y ago

I have a 5 year old and a two year old and I've absolutely banned unwrapping videos. They are like heroin. With cartoons they'd watch and be disappointed if we ended them. With this more addictive content my older kid would become aggressive and highly agitated if we stopped them.

sleazybae 9y ago

I read one of the first sentences of one of the paragraphs as "Kids’ videos are among the most wretched content in YouTube history," and went "well, yeah, Spiderman and Elsa and all that weird shit." Then I reread it properly and realized it said "watched content," and went, "yeah, that makes more sense, but it's definitely some of the worst stuff on the internet.

j_s 9y ago

I'm late to the party, but any advice on shutting down YouTube in the home at the router. I need an on/off button on my phone!

laxk 9y ago
One solution is to use a chromecast device (or similar devices), you can control everything(content, amount of time) from your phone.

mncharity 9y ago

I wonder if some of these formats might be leveraged for informal science education content? For instance, there was a play-doh egg surprise with a lego doctor figure with a stethoscope. Imagine instead an egg surprise with a real stethoscope (and maybe the figure and/or say a real egg with an inked on scope). Then show kindergarten kids using stethoscopes (it's a thing). Build associations between heartbeat sounds, wrist and apex palpation, the flashing heart icon of blood pressure machines and fitness apps, ECG, hr, hr vs time graphs, and so on. Include a clip of an N-yard dash and cool down, with with heart sounds, flashing icon, and hr graph. Hr sounds for sleeping person, walking, running or climbing stairs. For resting infant, kid, adult. And for mouse, cat, small dog, big dog, human, horse, whale. It's fun to see dogs and horses anyway, but why not take the opportunity to add heart stuff and hint at scaling laws too? The videos linked to from the article didn't seem odd choices. They seemed to have rich and fun "learning about the world" content.

luca_ing 9y ago
Good idea. But judging by my son's behaviour he would just select the next video once the "boring" educational content starts :-(
- mncharity 9y ago
  > once the "boring" educational content starts Imagine a cartoon about a kid playing with a doll. Cartoon creators know a lot about related topics, like life skills, social dynamics, fashion, etc. And so they can seamlessly integrate bits of those rich domains of expertise into the cartoon. The OP cartoon bear video covers a lot of ground. But now imagine a cartoon about a kid playing with a puddle. Cartoon creators know very little about puddles. Almost nothing of their physics, biology, chemistry, geology, engineering, and so on. No clue - stomp, laugh, mess. So science doesn't get the integrated and engaging storytelling which those other topics do. But there seems no fundamental reason it can't. Except... searching for videos is painful. Even when you know a video exists, it's often implausible to find. Using google and bing video search to find bits of educational content, feels like searching the web circa early AltaVista - one stop among several, all of very limited effectiveness. FWIW, here's a big stinky whale heart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnKuw7Wvz4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJnKuw7Wvz4 hoisted for display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4JIwlkUdEs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4JIwlkUdEs . A kid demoing a heart rate app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOjWmA_7yUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOjWmA_7yUc , and taking a stress test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCS_6ixfq8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCS_6ixfq8U . A fetal hr app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XaYl6RJVsc&start=13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XaYl6RJVsc&start=13 . A rabbit hr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLFLDszTYA&start=50 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLFLDszTYA&start=50 . A boring video of an interactive heart anatomy app https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLyXWjWcQtc&start=65 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLyXWjWcQtc&start=65 , to illustrate that VR/AR has the potential to massively disrupt education. A boring exhibit with some hearts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QthT9bs8Tws&start=15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QthT9bs8Tws&start=15 . There are very many videos on stethoscope use, variously flawed. Which is great for assembling piles of Fair Use clips, but not so good for linking here. And... out of time. So to reframe my original question: I wonder if youtube kids viral video formats might be used for outreach... but the cost of creation could be prohibitively large. Though there might be low hanging fruit, like a play-do egg surprise, filled with water, or bubble foam, or jello, or liquid nitrogen, or hydrogen, or... Thanks for your comment. I was(am?) considering an education project, but was clearly doing selective memory on just how massively time consuming it would be.

fil_a_del_fee_a 9y ago

A majority of these videos have the same recurring Disney / Marvel characters. I have a VERY STRONG suspicion these videos ARE sponsored by these very companies. There is no way they would allow these videos to get 100+ MILLION views if they weren't behind it. Regular people get fined and/or arrested for copyright infringement and/or pirating content all the time.