8 ms·

I get the feeling, but you must realize that preventing your children from using YouTube is like being the parent who prevented their children from watching tel

I get the feeling, but you must realize that preventing your children from using YouTube is like being the parent who prevented their children from watching television. You're teaching your children about censorship. It's easier, sure, but maybe it's worth the effort to have a mature conversation with them instead of wholesale preventing access to their generation's largest media platform.

mc32 7y ago
How do you have a mature conversation with children who are unable to process (due to age) certain advanced concepts like marketing, advertising, monetization, irrelevancy, deception, exploitation, etc? I don’t think they’re talking adolescents but rather toddlers and young children.
- CamperBob2 7y ago
  Simple. Tell your child, "Don't worry. Nothing you see on a screen is real." That will immunize them from everything from zombies to pornography to Fox News.
  - mc32 7y ago
    That doesn’t sound mature and also is dismissive of psychological manipulation, etc. It’ll be as effective as saying, “don’t be afraid of the dark, there are no monsters, that’s just your imagination.”
    - CamperBob2 7y ago
      That doesn’t sound mature (Shrug) Don't tell me, tell Plato. He came up with the notion. It’ll be as effective as saying, “don’t be afraid of the dark, there are no monsters, that’s just your imagination.” That's pretty effective, and something almost every parent has to tell their child at one point or another. What do you recommend saying instead?
      - soulofmischief 7y ago
        Somewhat fitting, because Plato presented the Cave Allegory specifically to illustrate "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature". However, the Allegory was about how our senses and perceptions limit our full understanding of the world, not the fact that things we see on a television or stage are not real. The former is a philosophical concept, the latter is just good advice.
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        However, the Allegory was about how our senses and perceptions limit our full understanding of the world That's my whole point. As a parent, you not only have the authority to tell your kids not to believe anything they see on a screen or hear through a speaker, you must raise them with that understanding. They will spend their entire lives with their senses and perceptions not only limited in a Platonic sense, but under active, continuous assault. "Somewhat fitting," indeed: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/05/edit-video-editing-text/ https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/05/edit-video-editing-text...
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying. Plato wasn't making a case for discerning fact from fiction using obviously fictitious sources (literature, dramas, TV, your friend Rob, etc). He was illustrating that our own senses and perceptions prohibit us from seeing reality in an objective nature. He compared the escaped prisoner to an enlightened philosopher, who has learned to use his mind and abstract thinking in order to see what his eyes cannot. Plato isn't saying, "Don't believe what you read in the newspaper," he is saying, "Don't trust your eyes and ears at all, because your entire reality might be false." That doesn't very much help a kid understand not to believe what he sees in advertisements or to distrust friendly faces who want to control them.
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        Either we're talking past each other, or you haven't put all that much thought into the implications of the whole "shadows on the cave wall" metaphor. You're right in that Plato wasn't offering us advice for distinguishing fact from fiction. He was saying that as far as anyone can prove, it's all fiction. Basically, I'm saying that instead of being prisoners, we have entered the cave voluntarily, and have delegated our senses to the wall. In addition to Plato's puppeteer, the one unavoidable agent of indirection between us and objective reality, we now have two, our senses and our screens. If you treat screens and speakers as if they are literal manifestations of the cave wall, it's no longer an abstract philosophical point. I'm saying that the only responsible thing I can tell a child is to believe nothing they see on a screen until they're old enough to argue with me about it.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  It isn't an easy conversation, and it's not one that happens over one discussion. It's something you have to actively teach them to understand while growing up. When I was three I had already developed the basic sense that people can lie and that advertisements are made by people. I had already taught myself how to read and was reading at a junior high level before even entering preschool. I have clear and distinct memories of all sorts of advertisements I viewed around that age, and my deconstruction of them. It is most certainly a skill that can be taught by then. I'm not special. Most people take for granted what a child can accomplish and waste those precious developmental years treating them like idiots instead of people. As for kids who can't even speak yet, I don't know why any parent would just plop them in front of a tablet device and YouTube. It's a literal propaganda platform and if your kid can't even form their own sentences then maybe you shouldn't be providing a direct link to bad actors who want to turn them into lifelong consumers.
  - mc32 7y ago
    To me your passage itself is an indicator that that’s not the level most three year olds are at. If it were then preschool would expect more from them and society would expect more and psychology would tell us these things. But they are all at odds with your anecdote, which while sincere, I don’t think we can generalize to the population. No, Google/YouTube with all their resources and experts should do better.
    - soulofmischief 7y ago
      > To me your passage itself is an indicator that that’s not the level most three year olds are at. I think we can focus more heavily on pre-scholastic education without raising our expectations. No one ever expected me to do anything; my family tree is extremely anti-intellectual. Despite the lack of expectations, I found the motivation to educate myself. The main driving motivation was fear of not being in control of myself or of being controlled by others, which I found knowledge could combat. We don't typically instill this motivation in children, because largely as parents we just either don't know any better or don't have the motivation ourselves. But I don't think that the average performance of a preschooler is indicative of the potential average performance. Too many factors come into play. So without raising expectations, we can increase our attention to our children's developmental years, and instill within them the proper motivations by example. Again, it isn't easy. And you're right, it doesn't completely generalize. Every person is unique. But I'm shooting for the average here. On average, we take for granted the learning capacity of children, and take for granted how much the early phases of their childhood impacts the rest of their life. To bring it back around, YouTube itself, in addition to tons of other online resources, has been a fundamental tool in my education. I would not nearly be where I am today without it. I can only imagine what I could have accomplished if YouTube as it is today existed in my youth. I don't think we should be denying that to children. I agree that Google needs to do better. It's that, or outside regulation will eventually creep in and turn the internet into the new TV.
- petre 7y ago
  I've seen a three year old kid smart enough to skip youtube ads by hitting the back button and restarting the video immediately afterwards. We, along with his parents and their friends, were quite impressed. Some kids reject ads naturally, because like us, they just aren't interested.
- hoseja 7y ago
  Children are smarter than you think.

mc32 7y ago

How do you have a mature conversation with children who are unable to process (due to age) certain advanced concepts like marketing, advertising, monetization, irrelevancy, deception, exploitation, etc? I don’t think they’re talking adolescents but rather toddlers and young children.

CamperBob2 7y ago
Simple. Tell your child, "Don't worry. Nothing you see on a screen is real." That will immunize them from everything from zombies to pornography to Fox News.
- mc32 7y ago
  That doesn’t sound mature and also is dismissive of psychological manipulation, etc. It’ll be as effective as saying, “don’t be afraid of the dark, there are no monsters, that’s just your imagination.”
  - CamperBob2 7y ago
    That doesn’t sound mature (Shrug) Don't tell me, tell Plato. He came up with the notion. It’ll be as effective as saying, “don’t be afraid of the dark, there are no monsters, that’s just your imagination.” That's pretty effective, and something almost every parent has to tell their child at one point or another. What do you recommend saying instead?
    - soulofmischief 7y ago
      Somewhat fitting, because Plato presented the Cave Allegory specifically to illustrate "the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature". However, the Allegory was about how our senses and perceptions limit our full understanding of the world, not the fact that things we see on a television or stage are not real. The former is a philosophical concept, the latter is just good advice.
      - CamperBob2 7y ago
        However, the Allegory was about how our senses and perceptions limit our full understanding of the world That's my whole point. As a parent, you not only have the authority to tell your kids not to believe anything they see on a screen or hear through a speaker, you must raise them with that understanding. They will spend their entire lives with their senses and perceptions not only limited in a Platonic sense, but under active, continuous assault. "Somewhat fitting," indeed: https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/05/edit-video-editing-text/ https://news.stanford.edu/2019/06/05/edit-video-editing-text...
        soulofmischief 7y ago
        I'm not sure you understand what I'm saying. Plato wasn't making a case for discerning fact from fiction using obviously fictitious sources (literature, dramas, TV, your friend Rob, etc). He was illustrating that our own senses and perceptions prohibit us from seeing reality in an objective nature. He compared the escaped prisoner to an enlightened philosopher, who has learned to use his mind and abstract thinking in order to see what his eyes cannot. Plato isn't saying, "Don't believe what you read in the newspaper," he is saying, "Don't trust your eyes and ears at all, because your entire reality might be false." That doesn't very much help a kid understand not to believe what he sees in advertisements or to distrust friendly faces who want to control them.
        CamperBob2 7y ago
        Either we're talking past each other, or you haven't put all that much thought into the implications of the whole "shadows on the cave wall" metaphor. You're right in that Plato wasn't offering us advice for distinguishing fact from fiction. He was saying that as far as anyone can prove, it's all fiction. Basically, I'm saying that instead of being prisoners, we have entered the cave voluntarily, and have delegated our senses to the wall. In addition to Plato's puppeteer, the one unavoidable agent of indirection between us and objective reality, we now have two, our senses and our screens. If you treat screens and speakers as if they are literal manifestations of the cave wall, it's no longer an abstract philosophical point. I'm saying that the only responsible thing I can tell a child is to believe nothing they see on a screen until they're old enough to argue with me about it.
soulofmischief 7y ago
It isn't an easy conversation, and it's not one that happens over one discussion. It's something you have to actively teach them to understand while growing up. When I was three I had already developed the basic sense that people can lie and that advertisements are made by people. I had already taught myself how to read and was reading at a junior high level before even entering preschool. I have clear and distinct memories of all sorts of advertisements I viewed around that age, and my deconstruction of them. It is most certainly a skill that can be taught by then. I'm not special. Most people take for granted what a child can accomplish and waste those precious developmental years treating them like idiots instead of people. As for kids who can't even speak yet, I don't know why any parent would just plop them in front of a tablet device and YouTube. It's a literal propaganda platform and if your kid can't even form their own sentences then maybe you shouldn't be providing a direct link to bad actors who want to turn them into lifelong consumers.
- mc32 7y ago
  To me your passage itself is an indicator that that’s not the level most three year olds are at. If it were then preschool would expect more from them and society would expect more and psychology would tell us these things. But they are all at odds with your anecdote, which while sincere, I don’t think we can generalize to the population. No, Google/YouTube with all their resources and experts should do better.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    > To me your passage itself is an indicator that that’s not the level most three year olds are at. I think we can focus more heavily on pre-scholastic education without raising our expectations. No one ever expected me to do anything; my family tree is extremely anti-intellectual. Despite the lack of expectations, I found the motivation to educate myself. The main driving motivation was fear of not being in control of myself or of being controlled by others, which I found knowledge could combat. We don't typically instill this motivation in children, because largely as parents we just either don't know any better or don't have the motivation ourselves. But I don't think that the average performance of a preschooler is indicative of the potential average performance. Too many factors come into play. So without raising expectations, we can increase our attention to our children's developmental years, and instill within them the proper motivations by example. Again, it isn't easy. And you're right, it doesn't completely generalize. Every person is unique. But I'm shooting for the average here. On average, we take for granted the learning capacity of children, and take for granted how much the early phases of their childhood impacts the rest of their life. To bring it back around, YouTube itself, in addition to tons of other online resources, has been a fundamental tool in my education. I would not nearly be where I am today without it. I can only imagine what I could have accomplished if YouTube as it is today existed in my youth. I don't think we should be denying that to children. I agree that Google needs to do better. It's that, or outside regulation will eventually creep in and turn the internet into the new TV.
petre 7y ago
I've seen a three year old kid smart enough to skip youtube ads by hitting the back button and restarting the video immediately afterwards. We, along with his parents and their friends, were quite impressed. Some kids reject ads naturally, because like us, they just aren't interested.
hoseja 7y ago
Children are smarter than you think.