3 ms·

With all the child-friendly content available on Netflix, Hulu, and HBO (the home of Seaseme Street), I think I'm going to skip youtube until my son is older.

chime 9y ago
Also Kindle Fire Kids edition is great for young ones. I have a completely locked down profile with only hand-picked shows/videos for my toddler. Mrs. and I are going through some medical stuff so it helps tremendously when he is able to stay quiet for 30-40mins at doctor's office watching Daniel Tiger. We don't let him play on his Kindle often but it is definitely one of the best purchases I made. I have been pretty selective with Netflix shows because some of them seem pretty repetitive. I had high hopes for Word Party ( http://nypost.com/2015/07/01/netflix-to-stream-kids-word-party/ http://nypost.com/2015/07/01/netflix-to-stream-kids-word-par... ) when I first heard about it but it is honestly the same 3-4 songs repeated over and over in each episode. Instead we prefer to let him watch shows for slightly older kids that involve better story-telling and more complex concepts. E.g. We Bare Bears in Hulu is great. I've noticed that 2d animation content is often much better than 3d and I think the medium post corroborates it.
ehsankia 9y ago
Youtube should really offer a mode where the parent gets the whitelist specific channels. There are plenty of channels full of amazing educational content, and with a whitelist, there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content.
- balls187 9y ago
  > there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content. Probably not a threat, but Youtube channels are really only protected by the strength of their owners accounts. For netflix et al, not only is the content curated, the content is created by known companies.
- jacobr 9y ago
  This. My 7 year old watches some awesome Lego building channels and some gamers that I've checked to be OK. For at least 6 months we have forbidden our 3 year old to watch YouTube because he ended up at some (harmless, but totally braindead) Spiderman nursery rhyme video and I figured he would be caught by bad algorithms. Sometimes the 7 year old wants to be nice to his brother and searches for spiderman. He knows they shouldn't watch violent stuff, but it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.
  - balls187 9y ago
    > it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all. I'm a child of the 80's, and many of the cartoons I watched still hadn't been censored of their racist imagery. I don't believe it harmed me, though oddly enough when I play Cuphead, I do occasionally expect a caricature of someone in blackface or stereotypical japanese to show up, simply because the game shares it's art style with Max Fleischer era cartoons.
    - jacobr 9y ago
      > I don't believe it harmed me That's very hard to know though. We all have unconscious stereotypes.

chime 9y ago

Also Kindle Fire Kids edition is great for young ones. I have a completely locked down profile with only hand-picked shows/videos for my toddler. Mrs. and I are going through some medical stuff so it helps tremendously when he is able to stay quiet for 30-40mins at doctor's office watching Daniel Tiger. We don't let him play on his Kindle often but it is definitely one of the best purchases I made. I have been pretty selective with Netflix shows because some of them seem pretty repetitive. I had high hopes for Word Party ( http://nypost.com/2015/07/01/netflix-to-stream-kids-word-party/ http://nypost.com/2015/07/01/netflix-to-stream-kids-word-par... ) when I first heard about it but it is honestly the same 3-4 songs repeated over and over in each episode. Instead we prefer to let him watch shows for slightly older kids that involve better story-telling and more complex concepts. E.g. We Bare Bears in Hulu is great. I've noticed that 2d animation content is often much better than 3d and I think the medium post corroborates it.

ehsankia 9y ago

Youtube should really offer a mode where the parent gets the whitelist specific channels. There are plenty of channels full of amazing educational content, and with a whitelist, there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content.

balls187 9y ago
> there's a near zero chance that these channels would suddenly start uploading bad content. Probably not a threat, but Youtube channels are really only protected by the strength of their owners accounts. For netflix et al, not only is the content curated, the content is created by known companies.
jacobr 9y ago
This. My 7 year old watches some awesome Lego building channels and some gamers that I've checked to be OK. For at least 6 months we have forbidden our 3 year old to watch YouTube because he ended up at some (harmless, but totally braindead) Spiderman nursery rhyme video and I figured he would be caught by bad algorithms. Sometimes the 7 year old wants to be nice to his brother and searches for spiderman. He knows they shouldn't watch violent stuff, but it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all.
- balls187 9y ago
  > it feels like a drug somehow to watch autogenerated content at all. I'm a child of the 80's, and many of the cartoons I watched still hadn't been censored of their racist imagery. I don't believe it harmed me, though oddly enough when I play Cuphead, I do occasionally expect a caricature of someone in blackface or stereotypical japanese to show up, simply because the game shares it's art style with Max Fleischer era cartoons.
  - jacobr 9y ago
    > I don't believe it harmed me That's very hard to know though. We all have unconscious stereotypes.