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YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

229 points by mimixco 6y ago

Sargos 6y ago
My kiddo uses YouTube Kids daily and I find it to be a great service with shows like Katie's Classroom which is like video preschool.
- trentnix 6y ago
  My kids watch in on weekends and we've found it pretty valuable as well. There's "junk food" crap on there, sure, but what we've seen is pretty innocuous.
- thebigman433 6y ago
  I work in a preschool and we love playing the kids yoga/movement based songs for the kids sometimes. During the winter when its too cold to play outside, we do some kids yoga and the kids love it. There are tons of good channels with this kind of content that are, imo, super beneficial
- wffurr 6y ago
  There are great channels to be found, but also a ton of weird crap that shows up in the recommendations. The stuff that bubbles to the top of the recommendations often isn't quality content; it's stuff optimized for watch time. There's a class of videos that seem designed to make kids' brains produce dopamine and want to watch more and more. If you control the remote or device, then sure, fine, stick to quality content, but I wish there was a way to turn off the recommendations that show up on the big screen at the end of the video or when the app loads but before I've searched for or cast something.
deleted 6y ago
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- chapium 6y ago
  The problem is, as soon as good content ends you are presented with videos chosen by algorithm. In absolutely no time kids will optimize for this via the suggestion bar. The other content is from the bizarre dystopia of content farmed videos and weird stuff like opening a toybox full of the same kind of toy. Its incredibly frustrating to filter, channels are whackamole. Also, youtube bypasses dns blocking, making it even more difficult to limit using more technical methods.
  - drivebycomment 6y ago
    > Also, youtube bypasses dns blocking Care to elaborate more on what you mean by this ?
    - chapium 6y ago
      /etc/hosts is useless since Chrome uses dns over https
      - drivebycomment 6y ago
        That has nothing to do with youtube, but chrome. So your statement is factually incorrect.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      You have to block all of google to block youtube basically and even then it may still get through.
      - drivebycomment 6y ago
        I don't know what you mean. Youtube won't function if you block youtube.com. I suppose I don't understand what you mean by "block" then.
esotericsean 6y ago
YouTube is still a great place. And yes, it has a multitude of problems, but personally I don't believe it's YouTube's job to make it a completely safe space for kids. Just like with television, it's a parent/guardian's role to parent their kids and set boundaries.
- ericmay 6y ago
  > I don't believe it's YouTube's job to make it a completely safe space for kids I would say it is if the product is literally YouTube Kids... [1] [1] https://www.youtubekids.com https://www.youtubekids.com
  - karmicthreat 6y ago
    And they did, it's just that something so "safe" is just completely bland and useless.
    - wffurr 6y ago
      It depends on your definition of "safe". YT Kids might be completely safe from violent sexual content, but it's a "vapid wasteland" of content optimized for the engagement algorithm, which has no values other than watch time. YT Kids videos (see some examples above) are highly tuned dopamine production displays with little educational content. There is good content on YouTube, like Cbeebies and BBC Earth, but that's not what tends to bubble up on the recommendation system. Even trying to watch individual videos or channels that I do like doesn't work well, because my two year old sees the recommendations and starts demanding what one, and now I have to say "no" to something that shouldn't have been offered in the first place. I've taken to saying "you can watch anything you want on PBS Kids" in response to demands for YouTube videos of various sorts.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      It's not bland and useless. It's only safe for a very narrow definition of the word. It's "safe" in the sense that kids won't see boobies or hear potty words on the videos. But it's unsafe in that they will be constantly inundated with marketing content that is proven to be very effective on kids.
briga 6y ago
I would agree with the assessment, but isn't your typical kids TV channel just as vapid? Are US lawmakers worried about the ads and commercialism we bombard our children with on conventional television?
- duxup 6y ago
  Depends on the channel. We have a dedicated public television channel where I am and the content is significantly better than YouTube: https://pbskids.org/ https://pbskids.org/ My kids will tell me about history and science that they pick up from those shows. I don't think I've ever heard anything from them that I liked when it came to YouTube content.
  - briga 6y ago
    PBS and similar publicly funded channels seems to be the exception rather than the rule here. Apparently taking market forces out of the equations is a good way to make better content for kids
    - duxup 6y ago
      I agree so much that I'd argue in a very general sense that PBS is also better content for adults... everyone ;)
  - tentacleuno 6y ago
    Everyone on here seems to be blowing the trumpet for PBS Kids. Is it really that good? I haven't checked it.
    - duxup 6y ago
      It really is that good. Folks behind their content are motivated by creating good content for the kids rather than commerical interests.
    - gergi 6y ago
      Yes. It is the only “channel” that seems to focus on quality programming instead of marketing/engagement. And the shows are just straight-up excellent.
j4yav 6y ago
Curated and at least semi-professionally produced content, like PBS kids, is infinitely better in terms of providing consistently good content. I think YouTube is at its heart fundamentally incompatible with providing only high quality enriching content. Everyone being able to make content means there are gems that would never otherwise get made, and also vast wastelands of garbage to sort through, or get dumped into by the algorithm.
- jcastro 6y ago
  Yeah I mix Youtube Kids with PBS with good success, the key I found is to just watch it with them. Compared to what I grew up on cable with manipulative ads YouTube Kids isn't even close to that level, but then again I make a point to pay attention to the content on there. I think YouTube has and does provide high quality content, it's the filtering that's the tough part.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  PBS Kids is made by people optimizing for quality content. YT Kids is made by people optimizing for marketing dollars.
  - jbluepolarbear 6y ago
    You can thank OPB for that. They have been long time partners with PBS and they curate and provide the pbs kids app and YouTube stream.
- abhishekbasu 6y ago
  > I think YouTube is at its heart fundamentally incompatible with providing only high quality enriching content. I think this is in some ways similar to reddit. While there are some great threads from time-to-time, it is a way for people to quickly vent/amuse themselves.
  - spicybright 6y ago
    Once I un-subscribed from all the defaults and main stream subs, content got wildly better for me. I still appreciate being able to pick what subreddits I see, instead of a big prediction engine pulling from different subs I may like. Huge ones like /r/askreddit are like tabloids. Same with any big /r/*advice. Niche subreddits are so good though. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/
lordnacho 6y ago
It's basically correct, there's very little of value on YT kids. It's junk food ADHD content, continuously. Just crappy content like ripoff songs and kids playing with toys, a giant toy advert. My little one used to go nuts when I turned it off. I've had to get rid of it in my house. Standard YT has some interesting channels that you can learn a lot from, but it's worth it for me to PiHole anything youtube anyway. Now I just curate interesting videos and the kids have to watch it with me.
- kache_ 6y ago
  Letting your kid browse algorithmically generated content is not wise :P If I'm vulnerable to stupid clickbait, can't imagine how badly children can be manipulated.
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    Yes, though they don't have credit cards, so the damage is limited to stunting their psychological development.
    - curiousllama 6y ago
      Well as long as it's low downside I'm fine with it
  - redisman 6y ago
    It's interesting how fast they find their favorite clips when I give them a phone in Incognito Mode Youtube for 15 minutes. I seed it with a normal kids clip like a Peppa Pig or something but somehow she used to find this weird car slowly crushing colorful objects channel every time.
- milofeynman 6y ago
  I've never let my kid watch youtube(or kids) but I will sit with him and watch mark rober squirrel video or smarter everyday or letsdig18. But it's less than 1 video a week. I think that's the only way to parent appropriately with YouTube...
duxup 6y ago
I swore off Youtube Kids a while ago due to the inability to whitelist / black list effectively (I hear it is better now). There really was a strange amount of 'empty' what seems like almost procedural generated type content that is just sound and noise and nothing happening. It's like hypnotoad with slightly more action, but only slightly more action. I go with PBS Video (https://pbskids.org/ https://pbskids.org/) if I need a quick go to type video for the kids. I trust PBS a hell of a lot more.
- otikik 6y ago
  I confirm that you can blacklist in YT kids now. You need to be logged in as a parent. You can block individual creators from the main YTK page then.
Bellamy 6y ago
Bigger problem is the parents who let their children watch youtube or whatever way too much.
- axaxs 6y ago
  I'm curious of the long term effects. Like you, I also think it's a disgrace. I had a friend who to me basically seemed like they didn't like dealing with kids, so just gave her daughter a tablet she was glued to at all times. I mean, young, I don't remember the age now but less than 2? She never made eye contact or any noise, just messing with the tablet. I can't help but think there's going to be a whole generation of socially broken kids. But, here's hoping I'm wrong.
  - Ekaros 6y ago
    I think we might already be at a few... Though in vastly different ways. I don't think social media has been healthy, but just pure consumers that might be coming up could be worse...
  - emodendroket 6y ago
    I can't be the only person here who spent their youth glued to a computer, can I?
    - julianlam 6y ago
      There are arguments made for and against that as well, but having a toddler glued to a tablet definitely doesn't seem right. Also (assuming you were born in the 80s/early 90s), the internet of our childhood is VASTLY different from what it is today... Both in good ways and bad, but mostly bad ways.
      - emodendroket 6y ago
        I suppose, but I'm not sure it was that much more salutary obsessively reading GameFAQs or Something Awful forums.
  - 6y ago
williesleg 6y ago
We need government funded programming that's educational on youtube kids.
drewcon 6y ago
Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbtbNmqENP1zTF-wJkXj0_WdIm&ab_channel=OKKYDOKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack jawed at these videos for hours, it was like he was being lobotomized, and begged for them constantly. It was clear that they didn't actually teach him anything, and he couldn't even remember anything salient from watching them. We turned them off and haven't let him watch since. Even things like watching looney toons is infinitely better because there is some base narrative, characters, problems etc.
- dkarl 6y ago
  Oh my god, that is horrid.
- dieortin 6y ago
  I find that video deeply unsettling.
  - lmkg 6y ago
    I feel like those videos could be generated without human intervention, by hooking a neural net up to some video software and pre-made assets and optimizing for views. And, while that's not literally how they're made, the difference feels increasingly academic.
    - yellowapple 6y ago
      > And, while that's not literally how they're made You sure? After watching a couple of 'em I ain't sure it's even physically possible for a human to come up with something so absurdly inhuman. It's like if that "surreal entertainment" channel branched out into actual kids' content instead of parodies thereof.
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deleted 6y ago
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paxys 6y ago
Write strongly worded letters to executives, Tweet clever zingers, hold hearings with CEOs and use clips from them in campaign ads... You know what would be nice? Folks in Congress actually passing laws to start fixing these problems.
ErikVandeWater 6y ago
I think they are right, but why is what bureaucrats think about YouTube Kids newsworthy? Politicians will always find results that lead them to being the protectors of children. They are using this to parlay into a bill being passed, as opposed to creating a campaign to inform parents they need to oversee their children better.
pandakar 6y ago
I don't think it's that bad. As with any service, depends what your the user is into. Do the lawmakers prefer television? I don't think that is better. No ads on Youtubekids, aside from the sponsored stuff. That's a plus.
impartial-word 6y ago
The only way I made it work was allowing only hand-picked channels. Otherwise my son was 2 clicks away of auto-generated null-quality videos.
dr_dshiv 6y ago
What's so stupid is trying to avoid having humans in the loop. Paying an educator to find 100 hours of decent content per age level couldn't cost much. It isn't youtube, it doesn't have to be endless. But it needs to be good and appropriate. Human curation is the right thing to do.
- kube-system 6y ago
  That seems to be antithetical to Alphabet's core strategy: automate everything.
  - astrange 6y ago
    Or sometimes just pay a ton of contractors to do something, and then tech media reports it as automating things.
- jonahhorowitz 6y ago
  What you're describing is Netflix.
excalibur 6y ago
Water "wet" say parents
plank_time 6y ago
My kid had a great experience with YouTube kids. He learned so much from it, it shocked me. At one point he memorized all the presidents and very detailed minutiae about the dwarf planets, most I had never heard of. My friends had a worse experience. Their daughter started watching cosplay videos where actors would dress up like Elsa and the Joker, and the Joker would kidnap Elsa and tie her up. Borderline porn and pretty inappropriate. Then she got fixated on makeup videos and they couldn’t stop her from watching those. It sort of proves the point that Google’s search and suggestion algorithms take your interests and magnify them instead of giving breadth.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  > Then she got fixated on makeup videos and they couldn’t stop her from watching those. If the kid has the last word on what she watches, the parents have their own problems. A family is more like a monarchy than a democracy, children can't outvote parents.
  - smabie 6y ago
    I mean, sure they can. They just make the parents miserable until the parents comply.
    - shard972 6y ago
      thats a monarchy
  - plank_time 6y ago
    Many if not most people aren’t sitting over their kids as they watch YouTube. And it’s hard to get a 4/5 year old to comply to anything.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    YT Kids doesn't have great browsing abilities, unless you're old enough to search. You're watching a video, and there's a carousel of related videos below it. It's very easy to get stuck in a loop.
makomk 6y ago
One unintended consequence of the FTC settlement mentioned in the article is that almost no-one wants to create high quality kid-friendly content anymore, because doing so forces them to accept huge restrictions on how everyone interacts with it - now no-one can add those videos to playlists or leave comments on them, by FTC decree, even if they're adults on the main version of YouTube. So anyone producing content that isn't vapid trash and could actually attract a wide audience is incentivised to aggressively exclude kids from that audience.
- darkwater 6y ago
  I struggle to understand how personal playlists need a user to work. And comments... well, YT Kids audience is not the most commenting one...
  - nicbou 6y ago
    I recall that YouTube had a problem with pedophiles using YouTube's standard features to discover and recommend each other otherwise innocuous videos. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of the reasons why they crippled their sidebar recommendations.
- oceanghost 6y ago
  This is infuriating as a parent. My daughter likes certain videos, and I have to write down the titles of her favorite videos to search for them every time she asks for them. (We watch YouTube on an nvidia shield). I honestly don't understand how this restriction makes sense, it all seems punitive.
  - throwaway3699 6y ago
    My uninformed answer is that one of the things that promoted YouTube into implementing this stuff was a YT peadophile ring was discovered to be sharing 'questionable moments' with playlists, comments and timestamps. Creepy as fuck.
    - 6y ago
gambiting 6y ago
The fact that several of the top grossing YouTubers are all kids channels opening toys should be telling already
jariel 6y ago
US Lawmakers discover their entire culture is built around consumerism? This is an Onion headline? In Canada, we have 'CBC for Kids' which thankfully is not consumerist, but is bizarrely more ideological than anything else. An series about 'violent dodgeball' in which the whiny teacher was adamant that "Children should not be targets!" - child after child interviewed indicated their love of the sport, that they enjoyed being targeted and 'dodging', the apparent enthusiasm and joy in their faces was a welcome bit of honest dismissal of some early stage priming. The poor narrative maker couldn't find a single child to back his meme. I'm curious to know just how savvy YouTube kids are, and how early they find out they're being hustled - that would be an interesting study.
betwixthewires 6y ago
Youtube is a vapid wasteland. Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you. And that's what the service really is, a recommendation engine. If there was no algorithm, just a video host, youtube would be much better.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  > Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you. There is a lot of interesting stuff on YouTube that is recommended to me, at least when I am logged in. When I am browsing in private mode or looking at the "trending" tab, it is less relevant to my interests (to put it gently) but it is not all terrible either. The comment section is the worst though, and it seems like YouTube is working hard at making is as uninteresting as possible. It looks like they are somewhat successful at preventing it from being toxic, but it looks like it works by killing all form of discussion and instead put forward endlessly copy-pasted memes.
- diplodocusaur 6y ago
  It used to be that you could search anything and you would find some related videos plus some random stuff people submitted or related through the description. Now, no matter what you search: it limits you to the most popular results, you see almost no random video uploads even after using filters, plus extra results unrelated to your search that YouTube will insist you watch even if it is unrelated to your original search. Truly lacking.
billti 6y ago
I think some of the best purchases I've made for my kids' development is Apple TV and YouTube Premium ($13/month for no ads is a great deal). My 4yo got into math heavily for a while, and shows like NumberBlocks were a big part of that. He got into drumming this last year, and there's so much great content from kids not much older than him showing how to play pretty much any song you like. That really motivated him. Any time we have a question pop-up that is best visualized to explain, like "Where does the poop go when we flush?", or "How does the wheat for bread grow?" - we just pick up the remote, ask the question with voice, and there's usually a couple of good quality clips to choose from. Yes, there's a ton of junk. Don't let kids mindless watching YouTube (or yourself - I'm often guilty when the insomnia kicks in). But its also a total game-changer for the breadth of on-demand quality educational content if you use it right.
trentnix 6y ago
sigh Government nanny pearl-clutching over children's entertainment is a time-honored tradition. They said comic books rotted kids brains in the 50s. They said He-Man was too violent in the 80s. They said video games were training killers in the 90s. They said animated shows had too many advertisements, introduced regulations to limit how much time could be allocated to commercials for animated shows, and ultimately put the final nail in the coffin of the multi-generational tradition of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Instead of letting parents decide what their kids can and can't watch, the government feels the need to do something about the lack of appropriately wholesome content. My kids watch Youtube Kids. Some of it is pretty terrible - fast food directly to their brains. Some of it is great - it stretches their imagination and vocabulary and skills. And because my kids are kids, sometimes they eat actual fast food too. And consuming virtual fast-food or real fast-food is not anyone else's problem.
- Someone1234 6y ago
  That's all well and good, but YouTube Kids lacks the TOOLS that parents need to help protect their children from the junk. The problem is that there's no money to be made from curation and high costs in doing so, therefore Google/YouTube simply does the bare minimum to avoid critique. You can ban individual videos and even channels, but this "solution" scales poorly with near infinite videos/channels, much of it unsuitable for your parenting goals. I agree that there is some fantastic content on the platform, but it is like a 5:1 thing between trash:quality. That's a problem.
  - trentnix 6y ago
    I have no interest in Youtube (or the government) deciding what is suitable and unsuitable. They've both failed miserably at similar efforts elsewhere. I can get behind the idea that I'd like better tools to monitor and curate the video content being streamed to my kids. I'd even be willing to pay for it! But I am not compelled at all that government needs to do something.
- allworknoplay 6y ago
  Let me get this straight -- a commercial ad-driven marketplace supplies a very substantial amount of content consumed by children and markets it as educational (and/or allows such marketing), parents are not educational experts, and you think it's problematic that the government might see a need to step in, starting with some basic fact-finding? Nobody is shutting the service down, dude. Maybe we find that nothing is really wrong. Maybe we challenge the company to more appropriately rate content that's marketed as educational, or do better ad filtering, so that parents can make informed decisions. Right now there are pretty clearly no requirements and lots of obviously false pedagogical claims, and parents can't afford to pre-vet all the content their kids might watch (and the marketing tells them they shouldn't have to). I don't see what your problem is. This is a major new phenomenon facing parents, it's super weird that you think some fact-finding is nanny pearl clutching.
daniellarusso 6y ago
Anybody remember when SonicWALL had a Youtube integration to restrict specific videos for schools? ‘YouTube for Schools’ http://help.sonicwall.com/help/sw/eng/9500/26/2/3/content/youTube_schools.htm http://help.sonicwall.com/help/sw/eng/9500/26/2/3/content/yo...
legitster 6y ago
People are ignoring by far the worst issue with YouTube Kids - as a parent you have no power to curate anything. It would be one thing if you as a parent could say "anything from these channels is okay", but your only option is to block videos one at a time. As it is, I have no way to prevent my toddler from spending 4 hours watching random Serbian videos of toys being dipped paint.
renewiltord 6y ago
Yeah but they also think heavy metal is Satanic speech. We're not talking about experts here. They have zero information content. This is the usual old generation hand wringing. Whether YT Kids is crap or not, these guys aren't who I'd go to to find out.
rvnx 6y ago
YouTube Kids is so bad, https://youtu.be/oEYUjI3mkB0 https://youtu.be/oEYUjI3mkB0 ... so nightmarish platform still same problem as 3 years ago ( https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-23-youtube-still-plagued-disturbing-kids-videos.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-23-youtube-still-plagued-di... )
- diplodocusaur 6y ago
  horrifying
- stolenmerch 6y ago
  While horrible, that's not YouTube Kids. It's just normal YouTube content by someone who thinks this kind of parody is hilarious.
  - rvnx 6y ago
    This cartoon was part of YouTube Kids (maybe this is just a mirror, and if it's a mirror, I don't understand why YouTube doesn't remove it, at least on DMCA grounds). There is so much weirdness anyway there (see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfFMZQyxB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfFMZQyxB0 posted few days ago ) It's clearly possible to see nobody moderated this content
ModernMech 6y ago
I don't see the issue. Our entire society is set up on the premise that American citizens need to consume. My grocery store has little child-sized shopping carts that kids can push around to learn the ropes of consumerism. There's even a little flag on it that says "Customer in training". During the early days of a global pandemic our own government was referring to American citizens as "Consumers" as they communicated information about the disease [1]. That's how they see us. That's all we're good for. Our entire economy is based on unlimited consumption. People are hired to produce widgets for integration into gadgets that will be consumed. If we suddenly decide that we've had enough gadgets, what happens to the supply chain of gadget and widget producers? There can never be enough gadgets or everything comes crashing down. Not only can there never be enough, there always has to be more gadgets produced compared to the year before, or else the markets in which people have bet their futures become unglued. There's no concept of fulfillment. There's a vast media empire in place whose sole purpose is to tell us we don't have enough, and that if we don't consume more we will be overtaken by emptiness. Even the HN front page of all places is guilty of pushing this message. Best to instill consumerist ideology in children as early as possible, so they don't start thinking that maybe they don't need the newest, slickest, shiniest gadgets. That maybe there is life and happiness outside of consumption. These are literally society destroying thoughts that must be suppressed at all cost. Western civilization depends on it. [1]: https://external-preview.redd.it/cloQPFfyR61-VvSdfol941t-AuYZWsPx3FDPfDTagVQ.jpg?auto=webp&s=6e29390574617685c2be308cb6693f5fbc96142e https://external-preview.redd.it/cloQPFfyR61-VvSdfol941t-AuY...
WillyF 6y ago
The YouTube Kids AppleTV app is also horrible. It freezes and needs to be restarted constantly immediately after opening. But even worse is that there is no way to quickly rewind or fast forward. You can only use the skip 10 seconds buttons. So if my son watches half of a show and wants to watch it again a week later, the show starts where he left off. I end up having to click the remote about 200 times to get back to the start. I upgraded to get rid of ads, which has made the experience much better, but the UI is really infuriating.
nikomen 6y ago
Do Google executives allow their children and grandchildren to watch YouTube kids? I'd be surprised if they did without significant parental oversight.
christkv 6y ago
PewDiePie did a music video dissing cocomelon one of the biggest producer of this garbage and youtube pulled his video to protect them, so yeah youtube does not care about any quality control on youtube kids.
indymike 6y ago
My kids HATE YouTube kids. It's utterly devoid of actual content, and I suspect it's sole reason for existence is to force parents to help their children lie about their age so they can access actual content on real YouTube. Google's family features really are quite terrible... For example, with Google Family, kids can't log into Google Play Games which blocks most games on Android, once again giving parents the choice to lie about the kids age, shut off all parental controls or basically tell your kids, "no games until you are 14". Likewise with YouTube Music, kids under 14 cannot even use it. So if you buy a family subscription, your kids can't use it unless you tell Google your kids are 14. The whole experience is shabby, and I think they could do a lot better. It is almost as if they design family features to suck so completely and utterly that you have to bypass them... Also, for kids over 14, there's no way to block them from making purchases with the family payment method...
- makomk 6y ago
  The trouble is that due to COPPA and probably similar laws in other countries, there are huge legal headaches involved in offering any kind of online account to under-13s - especially one which is shared with a whole bunch of third parties like Google Play Games is every time you log into a game. So I can't imagine Google changing that any time soon. Even just offering content that under-13s might plausibly set up adult accounts to access exposes them to fairly substantial legal risk.
  - indymike 6y ago
    I don't think you are understanding the issue: 1. Kid can't login to google play games and can't play some games and can't save progress in other games. 2. Kid gets parent to change their age or kid registers an adult google account outside of family controls. 3. Kid can now play games and save progress, etc. In all cases, parents lose controls and kid can spend money with impunity on family account (if you change their age).
    - detaro 6y ago
      And parents point is that if congress or the federal government comes knocking, Google can point and say "we offer a compliant kids account, the customer choose to break the ToS and lie to us! we can't do much against that!". Whereas if they allow something deemed "bad" on the official kids accounts, Google gets the blame. So it's easier for them to just do a safe-as-possible kids version, picking "safety" over usability.
freetime2 6y ago
Both of my kids watched YouTube kids on their iPad from around 2-4 years old. There is definitely some garbage on there (I'm looking at you surprise egg unboxing videos), but there is also a lot of content on there that I found pretty clever. Anyway - the point in our house was never to be educational, it was to give our kids (and us) 30 minutes to just chill out and relax. And it was extremely good in that capacity. The worries about commercialism turned out to be unfounded in our case. Yes - there were a few times that they wanted a toy they saw on YouTube, but they soon realized after getting their hands on them that in reality most of that stuff is crap. They pretty quickly grew out of watching/coveting toys they saw there, and in fact, I have found that they seem to be far less interested in toys than I was at their age. I also always got the feeling that a lot of content on PBS kids was more geared at parents than children. "Little Einsteins" for example isn't a bad show, but feels a little heavy handed to me in the degree to which it moralizes and pushes things like classical music appreciation on small children. Honestly, I really don't see a lot of value in teaching a three year old the theme to Beethoven's 9th symphony vs. Baby Shark. And it never held my kids' attention like YouTube kids could. A bigger concern for me now is just the addictiveness of the iPad/iPhone in general. They both lost interest in YouTube Kids around 4 years old, but they haven't lost interest in those devices. Our older son in particular could spend a whole day clicking mindlessly around iOS if we didn't limit him. So could I, for that matter.
sjg007 6y ago
My kids don't like youtube kids and prefer regular youtube so there's that which I don't know what to make of. They watch a lot of young adults doing adventure things and 24 hour challenges, among us in real life. Then there are roblox and minecraft videos which they watch and then go off and play with their friends while all facetiming together. Now they want to be youtubers. So it is not all mindless.
iainctduncan 6y ago
Almost like good content for kids requires well funded, nationalized broadcasting systems with no corporate interests calling the shots... sigh.
realtalk667 6y ago
Here is a nice project that illustrates the present situation, Brain Nursery Egg TV [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPXKXg9wP5Rgu2YdAVYWDQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPXKXg9wP5Rgu2YdAVYWDQ
lillesvin 6y ago
My daughter (9) got a phone recently and we're kinda managing it through Google's Family Link and it absolutely sucks in pretty much all regards. We're only interested in absolutely minimal control just to make sure she doesn't install something stupid/dangerous, other than that we trust her to use YouTube and the likes responsibly, but that's not The Google Way. YouTube Kids was the first thing that bothered me. Google wouldn't let me allow her to install regular YouTube, so she was stuck with that horrible, insufferable crap that makes Teletubbies seem like Kieslowski. It's still beyond me why she should be barred from listening to stuff like Kraftwerk's The Robots, Bananarama's Na Na Hey Hey or Hit 'Em High from Space Jam, all of which she's much more into than whatever YouTube Kids thinks 9-year-olds are all about. Fortunately I stumbled upon a toggle in the Family Link settings that would let me let her install and use regular YouTube. And forget about the YouTube Music family plan, that's just straight-up impossible on a sub-13 account. Then there's Spotify Kids (which is pretty much just as bad as YouTube Kids) but Spotify at least lets you lie about her age and install the regular app. (We've all heard the horror stories of Google completely shutting people out from Photos, Drive, etc. for lying about a kid's age, I'm not about to risk that just yet.) Oh, and you're also not going to be gaming with your kid on her new phone. Google Play Games won't let sub-13s sign in with their Google account. So this PEGI-3 rated disc golf game with multiplayer but no player interaction is a total no-go. I find it absolutely baffling how little control I have of these things as a parent. Why on earth can't I let my kid use YouTube Music? Why is she allowed to install a PEGI-3 rated multiplayer game but not play it? And why can't "sign in with my Google account" work like when she's asking permission to install an app? Seems like a pretty obvious way to go about it. /rant
- ggggtez 6y ago
  The problem you have is that you created a Family Link account and thereby told google that your child was under 13. This is intended to meet legal liabilities, and the most egregious helicopter parents needs. And due to the Childs Online Privacy Protection Act, pretty much any app that uses advertising has terms of service that prevent children from using it. You want Family Link to be less restrictive, but apparently the lawmakers in question won't be satisfied until the only thing your child can do is watch PBS reruns.
ggggtez 6y ago
Yes, but I'm not sure it's the government's place to decide how much educational content is required for "kids" content. I agree that there should be some reasonable restrictions on advertising, but deciding what is a waste of time doesn't seem like it's really in the government's authority.
electriclove 6y ago
It totally is. They are also pushing woke narratives like suggesting non-gender conforming videos as soon we signed up for it. Can't us parents talk to our own kids about that first?
godmode2019 6y ago
My kid (2) stumbled across this video recommended. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHXG_tiG4Mg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHXG_tiG4Mg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hK3Shnxmbmk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hK3Shnxmbmk It was not this exact videos, but it was very similar and in the description it said fun for kids, kids shows pepper pig. They were trying to show todlers horror content. It made me sick to think someone thought this was funny. These videos are not the problem it was other people reuploading similar content edited optimising for children traffic.
dtrain2017 6y ago
What was that one explainer that showed how unsettling youtube videos can be?
ddingus 6y ago
We struggle with this. And as an older, second time around parent, I definitely feel the struggle on both fronts: Many poor videos, and just general patenting energy required. Down thread, someone put the watch it with them email queue idea out there. Awesome! I am going to do that. Overall, our best success is to have activities that are not screen time. Many parents who may struggle financially, and there are way too many who do, in my view, lack time and potentially resources. This is a growing pinch for a while now. Tepid wage growth coupled with cost and risk exposure growth mean more labor and or fewer resources, both of which come right out of parenting. Some of it lands in the schools. The pandemic made that a mess and maybe for the better? By that I mean a whole lot of us have had to pick up the slack and or are doing more parenting right now. (That may come at a high financial cost due to lack of work, which is not good either) It is really hard to put costs on all this, but my general take on it all, comparing my childhood, that of my own kids and granddaughter now is: Opportunity costs are going to be huge! The squeeze on parenting, coupled with the general complexity of the society our future leaders and caretakers are expected to take part in, Shepard and grow to greater success, looks increasingly grim. I came out of high school computer literate, could code, but also with a ton of other skills. Fix my car, or many things really, work with wood, metals, and in general could take most work and thrive. My own kids got a fair amount of that, but I had to provide way more than my parents did. Today, I see I will have to provide a lot more. The general idea of so much greater information availability means less work educating has merit. I know what I would have done with that kind of access as a kid. But does it mean less parenting? Does it mean less exposure to basic skills? From my point of view, no. It does not. And to be clear here, my own parenting goals are to get the kids to a place where they can thrive and that means basic competence on many fronts just like I got. It may also mean part of the education burden is curating all this stuff and to teach them what to look for and how to make use of it. Most of us know. My kids mostly know and will ask for help sometimes. Less often as they grow in life. In my view, emphasis on broad, basic competence is more important bow than ever. If they can relate to things, have some experience, they will seek and be able to make use of the information resource and it will seem achievable too, not foreign, or unattainable. For now, I am making sure my younger one gets outside and is experiencing a broad set of skills. Just getting a handle on this world and the things in it. Parents need to be able to do that, and or for the many struggling parents who may not have a base to draw on, even if they do have time, need help, and may well benefit same as their kids do.
stevenalowe 6y ago
at least the kids aren't watching television any more
shirro 6y ago
Fortunately my kids grew up with access to high quality fta tv and streaming app from a public broadcaster (ABC Kids in Australia) which draws on educational consultants, great performers, writers, animators etc. I don't understand why anyone would want to put their kids in front of some random crap instead of the Wiggles or Bluey if they have the option. Kids spend way too much time in front of tv. It is just a fact with our lifestyles. So you might as well invest some money in it as a nation and make sure it is high quality.
jvvw 6y ago
It's been interesting watching the slightly slippery slope of YouTube with our children (now 7 and 10). A lot of good stuff isn't on YouTube Kids - to give an example off the top of my head, the Royal Institution channel with its Christmas lectures and lots of other really good content isn't on there. They also got very much into building things with redstone with Minecraft and many of the videos explaining things related to that are only on the adult version. As a result, we quickly gave up on YouTube Kids. There isn't any way to turn off recommendations that I could find and it's not realistic to pre-watch every video they watch and it's not easy to come up with good criteria for what it is ok for them to watch or not watch. I guess all you can do is keep half an eye on them while they are watching things. I think we've been lucky in terms of not hitting anything too terrible. Not sure what the solution is. There's a difference between low-quality content and unsuitable content and every parent will have different options. I'd really like to be able to add and remove particular channels to YouTube Kids and to turn off the recommendations.
ajdude 6y ago
It's interesting how quality has changed over the years for children videos. This is what I watched when I was growing up (it came out in the late 70s, so it was already around for a while by then though): Schoolhouse Rock, Interplanet Janet [0]. This is really how I knew the planets growing up. "Mars is red, and Jupiter's big, and saturn shows off its riiiiings, uranus is built on a funny tilt, and neptune is its twiiin, and pluto little pluto is the furthest planet from the suuuun, whoo hoooo" When my brother was growing up (around 2001, so I was 11 at that point), they had this song [1]. Kind of jazzy and relaxing. It went over the planets a few times in the verses, slowly taking the time to walk the children through it, and the way Nick Jr worked back in the day, the same episode would be on 3-4 times in a row every day, so the kid could really take it in. I could recite it from my head to this day. A couple years later (2005) you start getting songs like this [2], I'm glad I didn't have to rely on this for memorizing the planets? Still, it's only a minute long, I think this is when kids started to hit lower attention spans. I was trying to see what kids have these days. Since I'm basically seeing children as early as 5-6 months given an iphone/ipad to watch youtube, I figured I'd start there.... 99% of children's programming online is really crappy garbage shovelled out for dirt cheap with usually disturbing imagery subliminally thrown in. For example, this video [3] (I couldn't get through all three minutes, it was too monotone, repetitive, and the mouths on still frame were buttholes) Jumping away from YouTube (originated content), I did find a shorter video by "Netflix Jr." [4]. It came recommended by reddit parents. Fastpaced rapping, jumping around, but not badly animated but I do wonder if children would grasp all of the concepts from it. Trying to find the latest one that came out, was this [5] that wasn't hard for me to get through like the second-to-the last one (and hey it mentioned pluto lol) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGgajx1pGPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGgajx1pGPU [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8olJuyTyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8olJuyTyc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgGbOrz3Bqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgGbOrz3Bqk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAqT4hXnMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAqT4hXnMw [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxjuDePdCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxjuDePdCI
jjvens 6y ago
The solution is blatantly simple: don't let your children log into Google. Set their browsers to incognito mode and/or to accept - but delete - cookies on exit. The whole world wide web (including Youtube!) will be available to them, just with a severely crippled ability to suck them in using AI recommendations. Don't let young children watch unsupervised, and don't let Alphabet (or anyone else) track your children!

229 points by mimixco 6y ago

My kiddo uses YouTube Kids daily and I find it to be a great service with shows like Katie's Classroom which is like video preschool.

trentnix 6y ago
My kids watch in on weekends and we've found it pretty valuable as well. There's "junk food" crap on there, sure, but what we've seen is pretty innocuous.
thebigman433 6y ago
I work in a preschool and we love playing the kids yoga/movement based songs for the kids sometimes. During the winter when its too cold to play outside, we do some kids yoga and the kids love it. There are tons of good channels with this kind of content that are, imo, super beneficial
wffurr 6y ago
There are great channels to be found, but also a ton of weird crap that shows up in the recommendations. The stuff that bubbles to the top of the recommendations often isn't quality content; it's stuff optimized for watch time. There's a class of videos that seem designed to make kids' brains produce dopamine and want to watch more and more. If you control the remote or device, then sure, fine, stick to quality content, but I wish there was a way to turn off the recommendations that show up on the big screen at the end of the video or when the app loads but before I've searched for or cast something.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chapium 6y ago
The problem is, as soon as good content ends you are presented with videos chosen by algorithm. In absolutely no time kids will optimize for this via the suggestion bar. The other content is from the bizarre dystopia of content farmed videos and weird stuff like opening a toybox full of the same kind of toy. Its incredibly frustrating to filter, channels are whackamole. Also, youtube bypasses dns blocking, making it even more difficult to limit using more technical methods.
- drivebycomment 6y ago
  > Also, youtube bypasses dns blocking Care to elaborate more on what you mean by this ?
  - chapium 6y ago
    /etc/hosts is useless since Chrome uses dns over https
    - drivebycomment 6y ago
      That has nothing to do with youtube, but chrome. So your statement is factually incorrect.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    You have to block all of google to block youtube basically and even then it may still get through.
    - drivebycomment 6y ago
      I don't know what you mean. Youtube won't function if you block youtube.com. I suppose I don't understand what you mean by "block" then.

esotericsean 6y ago

YouTube is still a great place. And yes, it has a multitude of problems, but personally I don't believe it's YouTube's job to make it a completely safe space for kids. Just like with television, it's a parent/guardian's role to parent their kids and set boundaries.

ericmay 6y ago
> I don't believe it's YouTube's job to make it a completely safe space for kids I would say it is if the product is literally YouTube Kids... [1] [1] https://www.youtubekids.com https://www.youtubekids.com
- karmicthreat 6y ago
  And they did, it's just that something so "safe" is just completely bland and useless.
  - wffurr 6y ago
    It depends on your definition of "safe". YT Kids might be completely safe from violent sexual content, but it's a "vapid wasteland" of content optimized for the engagement algorithm, which has no values other than watch time. YT Kids videos (see some examples above) are highly tuned dopamine production displays with little educational content. There is good content on YouTube, like Cbeebies and BBC Earth, but that's not what tends to bubble up on the recommendation system. Even trying to watch individual videos or channels that I do like doesn't work well, because my two year old sees the recommendations and starts demanding what one, and now I have to say "no" to something that shouldn't have been offered in the first place. I've taken to saying "you can watch anything you want on PBS Kids" in response to demands for YouTube videos of various sorts.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    It's not bland and useless. It's only safe for a very narrow definition of the word. It's "safe" in the sense that kids won't see boobies or hear potty words on the videos. But it's unsafe in that they will be constantly inundated with marketing content that is proven to be very effective on kids.

briga 6y ago

I would agree with the assessment, but isn't your typical kids TV channel just as vapid? Are US lawmakers worried about the ads and commercialism we bombard our children with on conventional television?

duxup 6y ago
Depends on the channel. We have a dedicated public television channel where I am and the content is significantly better than YouTube: https://pbskids.org/ https://pbskids.org/ My kids will tell me about history and science that they pick up from those shows. I don't think I've ever heard anything from them that I liked when it came to YouTube content.
- briga 6y ago
  PBS and similar publicly funded channels seems to be the exception rather than the rule here. Apparently taking market forces out of the equations is a good way to make better content for kids
  - duxup 6y ago
    I agree so much that I'd argue in a very general sense that PBS is also better content for adults... everyone ;)
- tentacleuno 6y ago
  Everyone on here seems to be blowing the trumpet for PBS Kids. Is it really that good? I haven't checked it.
  - duxup 6y ago
    It really is that good. Folks behind their content are motivated by creating good content for the kids rather than commerical interests.
  - gergi 6y ago
    Yes. It is the only “channel” that seems to focus on quality programming instead of marketing/engagement. And the shows are just straight-up excellent.

j4yav 6y ago

Curated and at least semi-professionally produced content, like PBS kids, is infinitely better in terms of providing consistently good content. I think YouTube is at its heart fundamentally incompatible with providing only high quality enriching content. Everyone being able to make content means there are gems that would never otherwise get made, and also vast wastelands of garbage to sort through, or get dumped into by the algorithm.

jcastro 6y ago
Yeah I mix Youtube Kids with PBS with good success, the key I found is to just watch it with them. Compared to what I grew up on cable with manipulative ads YouTube Kids isn't even close to that level, but then again I make a point to pay attention to the content on there. I think YouTube has and does provide high quality content, it's the filtering that's the tough part.
mywittyname 6y ago
PBS Kids is made by people optimizing for quality content. YT Kids is made by people optimizing for marketing dollars.
- jbluepolarbear 6y ago
  You can thank OPB for that. They have been long time partners with PBS and they curate and provide the pbs kids app and YouTube stream.
abhishekbasu 6y ago
> I think YouTube is at its heart fundamentally incompatible with providing only high quality enriching content. I think this is in some ways similar to reddit. While there are some great threads from time-to-time, it is a way for people to quickly vent/amuse themselves.
- spicybright 6y ago
  Once I un-subscribed from all the defaults and main stream subs, content got wildly better for me. I still appreciate being able to pick what subreddits I see, instead of a big prediction engine pulling from different subs I may like. Huge ones like /r/askreddit are like tabloids. Same with any big /r/*advice. Niche subreddits are so good though. Ex: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/

lordnacho 6y ago

It's basically correct, there's very little of value on YT kids. It's junk food ADHD content, continuously. Just crappy content like ripoff songs and kids playing with toys, a giant toy advert. My little one used to go nuts when I turned it off. I've had to get rid of it in my house. Standard YT has some interesting channels that you can learn a lot from, but it's worth it for me to PiHole anything youtube anyway. Now I just curate interesting videos and the kids have to watch it with me.

kache_ 6y ago
Letting your kid browse algorithmically generated content is not wise :P If I'm vulnerable to stupid clickbait, can't imagine how badly children can be manipulated.
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Yes, though they don't have credit cards, so the damage is limited to stunting their psychological development.
  - curiousllama 6y ago
    Well as long as it's low downside I'm fine with it
- redisman 6y ago
  It's interesting how fast they find their favorite clips when I give them a phone in Incognito Mode Youtube for 15 minutes. I seed it with a normal kids clip like a Peppa Pig or something but somehow she used to find this weird car slowly crushing colorful objects channel every time.
milofeynman 6y ago
I've never let my kid watch youtube(or kids) but I will sit with him and watch mark rober squirrel video or smarter everyday or letsdig18. But it's less than 1 video a week. I think that's the only way to parent appropriately with YouTube...

duxup 6y ago

I swore off Youtube Kids a while ago due to the inability to whitelist / black list effectively (I hear it is better now). There really was a strange amount of 'empty' what seems like almost procedural generated type content that is just sound and noise and nothing happening. It's like hypnotoad with slightly more action, but only slightly more action. I go with PBS Video (https://pbskids.org/ https://pbskids.org/) if I need a quick go to type video for the kids. I trust PBS a hell of a lot more.

otikik 6y ago
I confirm that you can blacklist in YT kids now. You need to be logged in as a parent. You can block individual creators from the main YTK page then.

Bellamy 6y ago

Bigger problem is the parents who let their children watch youtube or whatever way too much.

axaxs 6y ago
I'm curious of the long term effects. Like you, I also think it's a disgrace. I had a friend who to me basically seemed like they didn't like dealing with kids, so just gave her daughter a tablet she was glued to at all times. I mean, young, I don't remember the age now but less than 2? She never made eye contact or any noise, just messing with the tablet. I can't help but think there's going to be a whole generation of socially broken kids. But, here's hoping I'm wrong.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  I think we might already be at a few... Though in vastly different ways. I don't think social media has been healthy, but just pure consumers that might be coming up could be worse...
- emodendroket 6y ago
  I can't be the only person here who spent their youth glued to a computer, can I?
  - julianlam 6y ago
    There are arguments made for and against that as well, but having a toddler glued to a tablet definitely doesn't seem right. Also (assuming you were born in the 80s/early 90s), the internet of our childhood is VASTLY different from what it is today... Both in good ways and bad, but mostly bad ways.
    - emodendroket 6y ago
      I suppose, but I'm not sure it was that much more salutary obsessively reading GameFAQs or Something Awful forums.
- 6y ago

williesleg 6y ago

We need government funded programming that's educational on youtube kids.

drewcon 6y ago

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbtbNmqENP1zTF-wJkXj0_WdIm&ab_channel=OKKYDOKY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack jawed at these videos for hours, it was like he was being lobotomized, and begged for them constantly. It was clear that they didn't actually teach him anything, and he couldn't even remember anything salient from watching them. We turned them off and haven't let him watch since. Even things like watching looney toons is infinitely better because there is some base narrative, characters, problems etc.

dkarl 6y ago
Oh my god, that is horrid.
dieortin 6y ago
I find that video deeply unsettling.
- lmkg 6y ago
  I feel like those videos could be generated without human intervention, by hooking a neural net up to some video software and pre-made assets and optimizing for views. And, while that's not literally how they're made, the difference feels increasingly academic.
  - yellowapple 6y ago
    > And, while that's not literally how they're made You sure? After watching a couple of 'em I ain't sure it's even physically possible for a human to come up with something so absurdly inhuman. It's like if that "surreal entertainment" channel branched out into actual kids' content instead of parodies thereof.
- 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

paxys 6y ago

Write strongly worded letters to executives, Tweet clever zingers, hold hearings with CEOs and use clips from them in campaign ads... You know what would be nice? Folks in Congress actually passing laws to start fixing these problems.

ErikVandeWater 6y ago

I think they are right, but why is what bureaucrats think about YouTube Kids newsworthy? Politicians will always find results that lead them to being the protectors of children. They are using this to parlay into a bill being passed, as opposed to creating a campaign to inform parents they need to oversee their children better.

pandakar 6y ago

I don't think it's that bad. As with any service, depends what your the user is into. Do the lawmakers prefer television? I don't think that is better. No ads on Youtubekids, aside from the sponsored stuff. That's a plus.

impartial-word 6y ago

The only way I made it work was allowing only hand-picked channels. Otherwise my son was 2 clicks away of auto-generated null-quality videos.

dr_dshiv 6y ago

What's so stupid is trying to avoid having humans in the loop. Paying an educator to find 100 hours of decent content per age level couldn't cost much. It isn't youtube, it doesn't have to be endless. But it needs to be good and appropriate. Human curation is the right thing to do.

kube-system 6y ago
That seems to be antithetical to Alphabet's core strategy: automate everything.
- astrange 6y ago
  Or sometimes just pay a ton of contractors to do something, and then tech media reports it as automating things.
jonahhorowitz 6y ago
What you're describing is Netflix.

excalibur 6y ago

Water "wet" say parents

plank_time 6y ago

My kid had a great experience with YouTube kids. He learned so much from it, it shocked me. At one point he memorized all the presidents and very detailed minutiae about the dwarf planets, most I had never heard of. My friends had a worse experience. Their daughter started watching cosplay videos where actors would dress up like Elsa and the Joker, and the Joker would kidnap Elsa and tie her up. Borderline porn and pretty inappropriate. Then she got fixated on makeup videos and they couldn’t stop her from watching those. It sort of proves the point that Google’s search and suggestion algorithms take your interests and magnify them instead of giving breadth.

ASalazarMX 6y ago
> Then she got fixated on makeup videos and they couldn’t stop her from watching those. If the kid has the last word on what she watches, the parents have their own problems. A family is more like a monarchy than a democracy, children can't outvote parents.
- smabie 6y ago
  I mean, sure they can. They just make the parents miserable until the parents comply.
  - shard972 6y ago
    thats a monarchy
- plank_time 6y ago
  Many if not most people aren’t sitting over their kids as they watch YouTube. And it’s hard to get a 4/5 year old to comply to anything.
- mcphage 6y ago
  YT Kids doesn't have great browsing abilities, unless you're old enough to search. You're watching a video, and there's a carousel of related videos below it. It's very easy to get stuck in a loop.

makomk 6y ago

One unintended consequence of the FTC settlement mentioned in the article is that almost no-one wants to create high quality kid-friendly content anymore, because doing so forces them to accept huge restrictions on how everyone interacts with it - now no-one can add those videos to playlists or leave comments on them, by FTC decree, even if they're adults on the main version of YouTube. So anyone producing content that isn't vapid trash and could actually attract a wide audience is incentivised to aggressively exclude kids from that audience.

darkwater 6y ago
I struggle to understand how personal playlists need a user to work. And comments... well, YT Kids audience is not the most commenting one...
- nicbou 6y ago
  I recall that YouTube had a problem with pedophiles using YouTube's standard features to discover and recommend each other otherwise innocuous videos. If I'm not mistaken, it's one of the reasons why they crippled their sidebar recommendations.
oceanghost 6y ago
This is infuriating as a parent. My daughter likes certain videos, and I have to write down the titles of her favorite videos to search for them every time she asks for them. (We watch YouTube on an nvidia shield). I honestly don't understand how this restriction makes sense, it all seems punitive.
- throwaway3699 6y ago
  My uninformed answer is that one of the things that promoted YouTube into implementing this stuff was a YT peadophile ring was discovered to be sharing 'questionable moments' with playlists, comments and timestamps. Creepy as fuck.
  - 6y ago

gambiting 6y ago

The fact that several of the top grossing YouTubers are all kids channels opening toys should be telling already

jariel 6y ago

US Lawmakers discover their entire culture is built around consumerism? This is an Onion headline? In Canada, we have 'CBC for Kids' which thankfully is not consumerist, but is bizarrely more ideological than anything else. An series about 'violent dodgeball' in which the whiny teacher was adamant that "Children should not be targets!" - child after child interviewed indicated their love of the sport, that they enjoyed being targeted and 'dodging', the apparent enthusiasm and joy in their faces was a welcome bit of honest dismissal of some early stage priming. The poor narrative maker couldn't find a single child to back his meme. I'm curious to know just how savvy YouTube kids are, and how early they find out they're being hustled - that would be an interesting study.

betwixthewires 6y ago

Youtube is a vapid wasteland. Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you. And that's what the service really is, a recommendation engine. If there was no algorithm, just a video host, youtube would be much better.

GuB-42 6y ago
> Is there interesting stuff? Sure. But it won't be recommended to you. There is a lot of interesting stuff on YouTube that is recommended to me, at least when I am logged in. When I am browsing in private mode or looking at the "trending" tab, it is less relevant to my interests (to put it gently) but it is not all terrible either. The comment section is the worst though, and it seems like YouTube is working hard at making is as uninteresting as possible. It looks like they are somewhat successful at preventing it from being toxic, but it looks like it works by killing all form of discussion and instead put forward endlessly copy-pasted memes.
diplodocusaur 6y ago
It used to be that you could search anything and you would find some related videos plus some random stuff people submitted or related through the description. Now, no matter what you search: it limits you to the most popular results, you see almost no random video uploads even after using filters, plus extra results unrelated to your search that YouTube will insist you watch even if it is unrelated to your original search. Truly lacking.

billti 6y ago

I think some of the best purchases I've made for my kids' development is Apple TV and YouTube Premium ($13/month for no ads is a great deal). My 4yo got into math heavily for a while, and shows like NumberBlocks were a big part of that. He got into drumming this last year, and there's so much great content from kids not much older than him showing how to play pretty much any song you like. That really motivated him. Any time we have a question pop-up that is best visualized to explain, like "Where does the poop go when we flush?", or "How does the wheat for bread grow?" - we just pick up the remote, ask the question with voice, and there's usually a couple of good quality clips to choose from. Yes, there's a ton of junk. Don't let kids mindless watching YouTube (or yourself - I'm often guilty when the insomnia kicks in). But its also a total game-changer for the breadth of on-demand quality educational content if you use it right.

trentnix 6y ago

sigh Government nanny pearl-clutching over children's entertainment is a time-honored tradition. They said comic books rotted kids brains in the 50s. They said He-Man was too violent in the 80s. They said video games were training killers in the 90s. They said animated shows had too many advertisements, introduced regulations to limit how much time could be allocated to commercials for animated shows, and ultimately put the final nail in the coffin of the multi-generational tradition of Saturday Morning Cartoons. Instead of letting parents decide what their kids can and can't watch, the government feels the need to do something about the lack of appropriately wholesome content. My kids watch Youtube Kids. Some of it is pretty terrible - fast food directly to their brains. Some of it is great - it stretches their imagination and vocabulary and skills. And because my kids are kids, sometimes they eat actual fast food too. And consuming virtual fast-food or real fast-food is not anyone else's problem.

Someone1234 6y ago
That's all well and good, but YouTube Kids lacks the TOOLS that parents need to help protect their children from the junk. The problem is that there's no money to be made from curation and high costs in doing so, therefore Google/YouTube simply does the bare minimum to avoid critique. You can ban individual videos and even channels, but this "solution" scales poorly with near infinite videos/channels, much of it unsuitable for your parenting goals. I agree that there is some fantastic content on the platform, but it is like a 5:1 thing between trash:quality. That's a problem.
- trentnix 6y ago
  I have no interest in Youtube (or the government) deciding what is suitable and unsuitable. They've both failed miserably at similar efforts elsewhere. I can get behind the idea that I'd like better tools to monitor and curate the video content being streamed to my kids. I'd even be willing to pay for it! But I am not compelled at all that government needs to do something.
allworknoplay 6y ago
Let me get this straight -- a commercial ad-driven marketplace supplies a very substantial amount of content consumed by children and markets it as educational (and/or allows such marketing), parents are not educational experts, and you think it's problematic that the government might see a need to step in, starting with some basic fact-finding? Nobody is shutting the service down, dude. Maybe we find that nothing is really wrong. Maybe we challenge the company to more appropriately rate content that's marketed as educational, or do better ad filtering, so that parents can make informed decisions. Right now there are pretty clearly no requirements and lots of obviously false pedagogical claims, and parents can't afford to pre-vet all the content their kids might watch (and the marketing tells them they shouldn't have to). I don't see what your problem is. This is a major new phenomenon facing parents, it's super weird that you think some fact-finding is nanny pearl clutching.

daniellarusso 6y ago

Anybody remember when SonicWALL had a Youtube integration to restrict specific videos for schools? ‘YouTube for Schools’ http://help.sonicwall.com/help/sw/eng/9500/26/2/3/content/youTube_schools.htm http://help.sonicwall.com/help/sw/eng/9500/26/2/3/content/yo...

legitster 6y ago

People are ignoring by far the worst issue with YouTube Kids - as a parent you have no power to curate anything. It would be one thing if you as a parent could say "anything from these channels is okay", but your only option is to block videos one at a time. As it is, I have no way to prevent my toddler from spending 4 hours watching random Serbian videos of toys being dipped paint.

renewiltord 6y ago

Yeah but they also think heavy metal is Satanic speech. We're not talking about experts here. They have zero information content. This is the usual old generation hand wringing. Whether YT Kids is crap or not, these guys aren't who I'd go to to find out.

rvnx 6y ago

YouTube Kids is so bad, https://youtu.be/oEYUjI3mkB0 https://youtu.be/oEYUjI3mkB0 ... so nightmarish platform still same problem as 3 years ago ( https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-23-youtube-still-plagued-disturbing-kids-videos.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-03-23-youtube-still-plagued-di... )

diplodocusaur 6y ago
horrifying
stolenmerch 6y ago
While horrible, that's not YouTube Kids. It's just normal YouTube content by someone who thinks this kind of parody is hilarious.
- rvnx 6y ago
  This cartoon was part of YouTube Kids (maybe this is just a mirror, and if it's a mirror, I don't understand why YouTube doesn't remove it, at least on DMCA grounds). There is so much weirdness anyway there (see for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfFMZQyxB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFfFMZQyxB0 posted few days ago ) It's clearly possible to see nobody moderated this content

ModernMech 6y ago

I don't see the issue. Our entire society is set up on the premise that American citizens need to consume. My grocery store has little child-sized shopping carts that kids can push around to learn the ropes of consumerism. There's even a little flag on it that says "Customer in training". During the early days of a global pandemic our own government was referring to American citizens as "Consumers" as they communicated information about the disease [1]. That's how they see us. That's all we're good for. Our entire economy is based on unlimited consumption. People are hired to produce widgets for integration into gadgets that will be consumed. If we suddenly decide that we've had enough gadgets, what happens to the supply chain of gadget and widget producers? There can never be enough gadgets or everything comes crashing down. Not only can there never be enough, there always has to be more gadgets produced compared to the year before, or else the markets in which people have bet their futures become unglued. There's no concept of fulfillment. There's a vast media empire in place whose sole purpose is to tell us we don't have enough, and that if we don't consume more we will be overtaken by emptiness. Even the HN front page of all places is guilty of pushing this message. Best to instill consumerist ideology in children as early as possible, so they don't start thinking that maybe they don't need the newest, slickest, shiniest gadgets. That maybe there is life and happiness outside of consumption. These are literally society destroying thoughts that must be suppressed at all cost. Western civilization depends on it. [1]: https://external-preview.redd.it/cloQPFfyR61-VvSdfol941t-AuYZWsPx3FDPfDTagVQ.jpg?auto=webp&s=6e29390574617685c2be308cb6693f5fbc96142e https://external-preview.redd.it/cloQPFfyR61-VvSdfol941t-AuY...

WillyF 6y ago

The YouTube Kids AppleTV app is also horrible. It freezes and needs to be restarted constantly immediately after opening. But even worse is that there is no way to quickly rewind or fast forward. You can only use the skip 10 seconds buttons. So if my son watches half of a show and wants to watch it again a week later, the show starts where he left off. I end up having to click the remote about 200 times to get back to the start. I upgraded to get rid of ads, which has made the experience much better, but the UI is really infuriating.

nikomen 6y ago

Do Google executives allow their children and grandchildren to watch YouTube kids? I'd be surprised if they did without significant parental oversight.

christkv 6y ago

PewDiePie did a music video dissing cocomelon one of the biggest producer of this garbage and youtube pulled his video to protect them, so yeah youtube does not care about any quality control on youtube kids.

indymike 6y ago

My kids HATE YouTube kids. It's utterly devoid of actual content, and I suspect it's sole reason for existence is to force parents to help their children lie about their age so they can access actual content on real YouTube. Google's family features really are quite terrible... For example, with Google Family, kids can't log into Google Play Games which blocks most games on Android, once again giving parents the choice to lie about the kids age, shut off all parental controls or basically tell your kids, "no games until you are 14". Likewise with YouTube Music, kids under 14 cannot even use it. So if you buy a family subscription, your kids can't use it unless you tell Google your kids are 14. The whole experience is shabby, and I think they could do a lot better. It is almost as if they design family features to suck so completely and utterly that you have to bypass them... Also, for kids over 14, there's no way to block them from making purchases with the family payment method...

makomk 6y ago
The trouble is that due to COPPA and probably similar laws in other countries, there are huge legal headaches involved in offering any kind of online account to under-13s - especially one which is shared with a whole bunch of third parties like Google Play Games is every time you log into a game. So I can't imagine Google changing that any time soon. Even just offering content that under-13s might plausibly set up adult accounts to access exposes them to fairly substantial legal risk.
- indymike 6y ago
  I don't think you are understanding the issue: 1. Kid can't login to google play games and can't play some games and can't save progress in other games. 2. Kid gets parent to change their age or kid registers an adult google account outside of family controls. 3. Kid can now play games and save progress, etc. In all cases, parents lose controls and kid can spend money with impunity on family account (if you change their age).
  - detaro 6y ago
    And parents point is that if congress or the federal government comes knocking, Google can point and say "we offer a compliant kids account, the customer choose to break the ToS and lie to us! we can't do much against that!". Whereas if they allow something deemed "bad" on the official kids accounts, Google gets the blame. So it's easier for them to just do a safe-as-possible kids version, picking "safety" over usability.

freetime2 6y ago

Both of my kids watched YouTube kids on their iPad from around 2-4 years old. There is definitely some garbage on there (I'm looking at you surprise egg unboxing videos), but there is also a lot of content on there that I found pretty clever. Anyway - the point in our house was never to be educational, it was to give our kids (and us) 30 minutes to just chill out and relax. And it was extremely good in that capacity. The worries about commercialism turned out to be unfounded in our case. Yes - there were a few times that they wanted a toy they saw on YouTube, but they soon realized after getting their hands on them that in reality most of that stuff is crap. They pretty quickly grew out of watching/coveting toys they saw there, and in fact, I have found that they seem to be far less interested in toys than I was at their age. I also always got the feeling that a lot of content on PBS kids was more geared at parents than children. "Little Einsteins" for example isn't a bad show, but feels a little heavy handed to me in the degree to which it moralizes and pushes things like classical music appreciation on small children. Honestly, I really don't see a lot of value in teaching a three year old the theme to Beethoven's 9th symphony vs. Baby Shark. And it never held my kids' attention like YouTube kids could. A bigger concern for me now is just the addictiveness of the iPad/iPhone in general. They both lost interest in YouTube Kids around 4 years old, but they haven't lost interest in those devices. Our older son in particular could spend a whole day clicking mindlessly around iOS if we didn't limit him. So could I, for that matter.

sjg007 6y ago

My kids don't like youtube kids and prefer regular youtube so there's that which I don't know what to make of. They watch a lot of young adults doing adventure things and 24 hour challenges, among us in real life. Then there are roblox and minecraft videos which they watch and then go off and play with their friends while all facetiming together. Now they want to be youtubers. So it is not all mindless.

iainctduncan 6y ago

Almost like good content for kids requires well funded, nationalized broadcasting systems with no corporate interests calling the shots... sigh.

realtalk667 6y ago

Here is a nice project that illustrates the present situation, Brain Nursery Egg TV [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPXKXg9wP5Rgu2YdAVYWDQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiPXKXg9wP5Rgu2YdAVYWDQ

lillesvin 6y ago

My daughter (9) got a phone recently and we're kinda managing it through Google's Family Link and it absolutely sucks in pretty much all regards. We're only interested in absolutely minimal control just to make sure she doesn't install something stupid/dangerous, other than that we trust her to use YouTube and the likes responsibly, but that's not The Google Way. YouTube Kids was the first thing that bothered me. Google wouldn't let me allow her to install regular YouTube, so she was stuck with that horrible, insufferable crap that makes Teletubbies seem like Kieslowski. It's still beyond me why she should be barred from listening to stuff like Kraftwerk's The Robots, Bananarama's Na Na Hey Hey or Hit 'Em High from Space Jam, all of which she's much more into than whatever YouTube Kids thinks 9-year-olds are all about. Fortunately I stumbled upon a toggle in the Family Link settings that would let me let her install and use regular YouTube. And forget about the YouTube Music family plan, that's just straight-up impossible on a sub-13 account. Then there's Spotify Kids (which is pretty much just as bad as YouTube Kids) but Spotify at least lets you lie about her age and install the regular app. (We've all heard the horror stories of Google completely shutting people out from Photos, Drive, etc. for lying about a kid's age, I'm not about to risk that just yet.) Oh, and you're also not going to be gaming with your kid on her new phone. Google Play Games won't let sub-13s sign in with their Google account. So this PEGI-3 rated disc golf game with multiplayer but no player interaction is a total no-go. I find it absolutely baffling how little control I have of these things as a parent. Why on earth can't I let my kid use YouTube Music? Why is she allowed to install a PEGI-3 rated multiplayer game but not play it? And why can't "sign in with my Google account" work like when she's asking permission to install an app? Seems like a pretty obvious way to go about it. /rant

ggggtez 6y ago
The problem you have is that you created a Family Link account and thereby told google that your child was under 13. This is intended to meet legal liabilities, and the most egregious helicopter parents needs. And due to the Childs Online Privacy Protection Act, pretty much any app that uses advertising has terms of service that prevent children from using it. You want Family Link to be less restrictive, but apparently the lawmakers in question won't be satisfied until the only thing your child can do is watch PBS reruns.

ggggtez 6y ago

Yes, but I'm not sure it's the government's place to decide how much educational content is required for "kids" content. I agree that there should be some reasonable restrictions on advertising, but deciding what is a waste of time doesn't seem like it's really in the government's authority.

electriclove 6y ago

It totally is. They are also pushing woke narratives like suggesting non-gender conforming videos as soon we signed up for it. Can't us parents talk to our own kids about that first?

godmode2019 6y ago

My kid (2) stumbled across this video recommended. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHXG_tiG4Mg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHXG_tiG4Mg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hK3Shnxmbmk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hK3Shnxmbmk It was not this exact videos, but it was very similar and in the description it said fun for kids, kids shows pepper pig. They were trying to show todlers horror content. It made me sick to think someone thought this was funny. These videos are not the problem it was other people reuploading similar content edited optimising for children traffic.

dtrain2017 6y ago

What was that one explainer that showed how unsettling youtube videos can be?

ddingus 6y ago

We struggle with this. And as an older, second time around parent, I definitely feel the struggle on both fronts: Many poor videos, and just general patenting energy required. Down thread, someone put the watch it with them email queue idea out there. Awesome! I am going to do that. Overall, our best success is to have activities that are not screen time. Many parents who may struggle financially, and there are way too many who do, in my view, lack time and potentially resources. This is a growing pinch for a while now. Tepid wage growth coupled with cost and risk exposure growth mean more labor and or fewer resources, both of which come right out of parenting. Some of it lands in the schools. The pandemic made that a mess and maybe for the better? By that I mean a whole lot of us have had to pick up the slack and or are doing more parenting right now. (That may come at a high financial cost due to lack of work, which is not good either) It is really hard to put costs on all this, but my general take on it all, comparing my childhood, that of my own kids and granddaughter now is: Opportunity costs are going to be huge! The squeeze on parenting, coupled with the general complexity of the society our future leaders and caretakers are expected to take part in, Shepard and grow to greater success, looks increasingly grim. I came out of high school computer literate, could code, but also with a ton of other skills. Fix my car, or many things really, work with wood, metals, and in general could take most work and thrive. My own kids got a fair amount of that, but I had to provide way more than my parents did. Today, I see I will have to provide a lot more. The general idea of so much greater information availability means less work educating has merit. I know what I would have done with that kind of access as a kid. But does it mean less parenting? Does it mean less exposure to basic skills? From my point of view, no. It does not. And to be clear here, my own parenting goals are to get the kids to a place where they can thrive and that means basic competence on many fronts just like I got. It may also mean part of the education burden is curating all this stuff and to teach them what to look for and how to make use of it. Most of us know. My kids mostly know and will ask for help sometimes. Less often as they grow in life. In my view, emphasis on broad, basic competence is more important bow than ever. If they can relate to things, have some experience, they will seek and be able to make use of the information resource and it will seem achievable too, not foreign, or unattainable. For now, I am making sure my younger one gets outside and is experiencing a broad set of skills. Just getting a handle on this world and the things in it. Parents need to be able to do that, and or for the many struggling parents who may not have a base to draw on, even if they do have time, need help, and may well benefit same as their kids do.

stevenalowe 6y ago

at least the kids aren't watching television any more

shirro 6y ago

Fortunately my kids grew up with access to high quality fta tv and streaming app from a public broadcaster (ABC Kids in Australia) which draws on educational consultants, great performers, writers, animators etc. I don't understand why anyone would want to put their kids in front of some random crap instead of the Wiggles or Bluey if they have the option. Kids spend way too much time in front of tv. It is just a fact with our lifestyles. So you might as well invest some money in it as a nation and make sure it is high quality.

jvvw 6y ago

It's been interesting watching the slightly slippery slope of YouTube with our children (now 7 and 10). A lot of good stuff isn't on YouTube Kids - to give an example off the top of my head, the Royal Institution channel with its Christmas lectures and lots of other really good content isn't on there. They also got very much into building things with redstone with Minecraft and many of the videos explaining things related to that are only on the adult version. As a result, we quickly gave up on YouTube Kids. There isn't any way to turn off recommendations that I could find and it's not realistic to pre-watch every video they watch and it's not easy to come up with good criteria for what it is ok for them to watch or not watch. I guess all you can do is keep half an eye on them while they are watching things. I think we've been lucky in terms of not hitting anything too terrible. Not sure what the solution is. There's a difference between low-quality content and unsuitable content and every parent will have different options. I'd really like to be able to add and remove particular channels to YouTube Kids and to turn off the recommendations.

ajdude 6y ago

It's interesting how quality has changed over the years for children videos. This is what I watched when I was growing up (it came out in the late 70s, so it was already around for a while by then though): Schoolhouse Rock, Interplanet Janet [0]. This is really how I knew the planets growing up. "Mars is red, and Jupiter's big, and saturn shows off its riiiiings, uranus is built on a funny tilt, and neptune is its twiiin, and pluto little pluto is the furthest planet from the suuuun, whoo hoooo" When my brother was growing up (around 2001, so I was 11 at that point), they had this song [1]. Kind of jazzy and relaxing. It went over the planets a few times in the verses, slowly taking the time to walk the children through it, and the way Nick Jr worked back in the day, the same episode would be on 3-4 times in a row every day, so the kid could really take it in. I could recite it from my head to this day. A couple years later (2005) you start getting songs like this [2], I'm glad I didn't have to rely on this for memorizing the planets? Still, it's only a minute long, I think this is when kids started to hit lower attention spans. I was trying to see what kids have these days. Since I'm basically seeing children as early as 5-6 months given an iphone/ipad to watch youtube, I figured I'd start there.... 99% of children's programming online is really crappy garbage shovelled out for dirt cheap with usually disturbing imagery subliminally thrown in. For example, this video [3] (I couldn't get through all three minutes, it was too monotone, repetitive, and the mouths on still frame were buttholes) Jumping away from YouTube (originated content), I did find a shorter video by "Netflix Jr." [4]. It came recommended by reddit parents. Fastpaced rapping, jumping around, but not badly animated but I do wonder if children would grasp all of the concepts from it. Trying to find the latest one that came out, was this [5] that wasn't hard for me to get through like the second-to-the last one (and hey it mentioned pluto lol) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGgajx1pGPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGgajx1pGPU [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8olJuyTyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8olJuyTyc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgGbOrz3Bqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgGbOrz3Bqk [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrlgH97v94 [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAqT4hXnMw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAqT4hXnMw [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxjuDePdCI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCxjuDePdCI

jjvens 6y ago

The solution is blatantly simple: don't let your children log into Google. Set their browsers to incognito mode and/or to accept - but delete - cookies on exit. The whole world wide web (including Youtube!) will be available to them, just with a severely crippled ability to suck them in using AI recommendations. Don't let young children watch unsupervised, and don't let Alphabet (or anyone else) track your children!