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 unboxin

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.