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Youtube is pretty magical. It has everything, even in the "kid zone". Which also means I can't leave them unsupervised for 30 minutes and come back. If I do, m

Youtube is pretty magical. It has everything, even in the "kid zone". Which also means I can't leave them unsupervised for 30 minutes and come back. If I do, my kids will've gone from educational video about the rain forest to sponsored video to toy videos to slime to fart jokes to music videos of bikini-clad bimbos to steamy romance videos to ... Anyway it's just too much work to curate youtube for a child, IMO. For example, my kiddo found a bunch of inappropriately steamy fan fiction for her favorite cartoons narrated on youtube... and she demonstrated that she knew it was inappropriate because she started hiding her screen from us.

elpatoisthebest 5y ago
This is exactly our experience with Youtube. I can sit with my kid and watch a couple episodes of a show I've never heard of (Like Bluey) and say, "Yep, this is a definite thumbs up. You can watch Bluey when you have screen time" And I trust that when an episode ends, another episode of Bluey is what will show up. For a youtube channel, I have to watch the entire video and I can say, "Yep, you can watch this exact video. Make sure autoplay is off." I have no clue what video would play next. I have no clue what product the youtuber will try to shill in the middle of the video, etc.
tumblen 5y ago
The other thing we find with our 3 year old is that he can have his tablet and watch movies or shows on Netflix/VLC, etc. and it's pretty much all positive. But he always prefers YouTube and when he's using YouTube, he mostly watches 3-5 minutes of something before getting enticed by another thumbnail. At times when he's had free reign to YT, it really seems to drastically affect his general attention, patience, temperament and even ability to sleep (he wakes up super early asking for his tablet). Once we cut it off hard, he goes back to normal. We don't really believe in complete abstinence of those sorts of things (I think it will just make him even more sensitive to those algorithms in the future) but being aware of the effect, reducing YT and prioritizing actual movies/series has made a noticeable difference.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  You could use a different YouTube client perhaps. I use newpipe. It doesn't really do those recommendations. But in general I really hate video sites too so I don't use it much at all. Too many harebrained "influencers" now trying to sell stuff
- spanktheuser 5y ago
  As they get older, you’ll also find YouTube Kids serves as the primary gateway for consumerism / corporations to begin influencing your child. Between Netflix / Disney+, the traditional 30s television commercial has effectively disappeared for kids. Corporations have pivoted to sponsored content on YouTube kids. YT Kids most popular channels are streamed play sessions and toy reviews with superhuman production values and unrealistic depictions of what the toys can do. Once a child has watched an episode of LOL doll play along (for example), YouTube algorithm will recommend LOL doll collection videos, which associate completist collecting with peer group social acceptance. Free to play video game spots were even worse, directly focusing on alluring introduction of the game’s addiction economy. I gave my children access to YouTube kids for some of the excellent educational content reasoning that it would be a relatively safe experience. Within a month their homepage and all recommendations (and I do mean 100%) were sponsored 5-15 minute long toy commercials. Their interest in animals, nature, science, and dinosaur programming remained strong but disappeared entirely from view outside of keyword search. All YT and Google apps are now removed from the devices they use. I allow unsupervised use of PBS Kids, PBS in general, Nat Geo, Disney Plus and Netflix Kids (with time limits) but YouTube is filtered from my kids devices at the router. They are not allowed Google accounts; all YouTube content access is done via keyword search with a parent selecting the material and remaining in the room during viewing. There are programs on YouTube that can’t be replicated anywhere else. But the recommendation engine is distilled corruption and dismay.
Joeri 5y ago
My kids couldn’t handle youtube. They would watch algorithmically created garbage (5yo) or endless game streaming (9yo) and be impossible to handle afterwards. First we did youtube time-outs, but every time we added it back into the mix we saw their behavior get worse, so eventually we banned youtube outright. Give me a curated platform like disney or netflix any day.
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Youtube is not for kids; TOS does not allow it.
  - rnotaro 5y ago
    They literally have Youtube for kids.. https://www.youtube.com/kids/ https://www.youtube.com/kids/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.kids https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      And? Small percentage bothers to use, and it’s not foolproof on inappropriateness. They were caught surveilling kids also.
Nextgrid 5y ago
I see so many of these complaints about YT having lots of good family-friendly content but at the same time being terrible at curation even in the kids mode. Seems like the problem can be solved with a crowdsourced list of family-friendly videos (on GitHub?) managed by trusted collaborators and then a simple page that embeds only these videos? Over time I assume it should work given enough people contributing. It's not like the content needs to be kept continuously up to date either (unless old videos disappear faster than new ones are added).
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  Youtube tries to "hook" you. Between autoplay and recommended thumbnails (that can't be disabled) it's easy to get "hijacked". The worst part is that recommendations aren't in line with the content level of what you are viewing.
- jannes 5y ago
  Don’t even try. You would basically have to rewrite the entire YouTube client to get rid of all the dark patterns.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    It's already done though: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
- spanktheuser 5y ago
  The problem is that the business model of YT kids contact creators contains incentives similar to those of SEO farms operating in the Google keyword ecosystem. Good content is shouldered aside by low effort, low value, high profit messaging.

elpatoisthebest 5y ago

This is exactly our experience with Youtube. I can sit with my kid and watch a couple episodes of a show I've never heard of (Like Bluey) and say, "Yep, this is a definite thumbs up. You can watch Bluey when you have screen time" And I trust that when an episode ends, another episode of Bluey is what will show up. For a youtube channel, I have to watch the entire video and I can say, "Yep, you can watch this exact video. Make sure autoplay is off." I have no clue what video would play next. I have no clue what product the youtuber will try to shill in the middle of the video, etc.

tumblen 5y ago

The other thing we find with our 3 year old is that he can have his tablet and watch movies or shows on Netflix/VLC, etc. and it's pretty much all positive. But he always prefers YouTube and when he's using YouTube, he mostly watches 3-5 minutes of something before getting enticed by another thumbnail. At times when he's had free reign to YT, it really seems to drastically affect his general attention, patience, temperament and even ability to sleep (he wakes up super early asking for his tablet). Once we cut it off hard, he goes back to normal. We don't really believe in complete abstinence of those sorts of things (I think it will just make him even more sensitive to those algorithms in the future) but being aware of the effect, reducing YT and prioritizing actual movies/series has made a noticeable difference.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
You could use a different YouTube client perhaps. I use newpipe. It doesn't really do those recommendations. But in general I really hate video sites too so I don't use it much at all. Too many harebrained "influencers" now trying to sell stuff
spanktheuser 5y ago
As they get older, you’ll also find YouTube Kids serves as the primary gateway for consumerism / corporations to begin influencing your child. Between Netflix / Disney+, the traditional 30s television commercial has effectively disappeared for kids. Corporations have pivoted to sponsored content on YouTube kids. YT Kids most popular channels are streamed play sessions and toy reviews with superhuman production values and unrealistic depictions of what the toys can do. Once a child has watched an episode of LOL doll play along (for example), YouTube algorithm will recommend LOL doll collection videos, which associate completist collecting with peer group social acceptance. Free to play video game spots were even worse, directly focusing on alluring introduction of the game’s addiction economy. I gave my children access to YouTube kids for some of the excellent educational content reasoning that it would be a relatively safe experience. Within a month their homepage and all recommendations (and I do mean 100%) were sponsored 5-15 minute long toy commercials. Their interest in animals, nature, science, and dinosaur programming remained strong but disappeared entirely from view outside of keyword search. All YT and Google apps are now removed from the devices they use. I allow unsupervised use of PBS Kids, PBS in general, Nat Geo, Disney Plus and Netflix Kids (with time limits) but YouTube is filtered from my kids devices at the router. They are not allowed Google accounts; all YouTube content access is done via keyword search with a parent selecting the material and remaining in the room during viewing. There are programs on YouTube that can’t be replicated anywhere else. But the recommendation engine is distilled corruption and dismay.

Joeri 5y ago

My kids couldn’t handle youtube. They would watch algorithmically created garbage (5yo) or endless game streaming (9yo) and be impossible to handle afterwards. First we did youtube time-outs, but every time we added it back into the mix we saw their behavior get worse, so eventually we banned youtube outright. Give me a curated platform like disney or netflix any day.

mixmastamyk 5y ago
Youtube is not for kids; TOS does not allow it.
- rnotaro 5y ago
  They literally have Youtube for kids.. https://www.youtube.com/kids/ https://www.youtube.com/kids/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.youtube.kids https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    And? Small percentage bothers to use, and it’s not foolproof on inappropriateness. They were caught surveilling kids also.

Nextgrid 5y ago

I see so many of these complaints about YT having lots of good family-friendly content but at the same time being terrible at curation even in the kids mode. Seems like the problem can be solved with a crowdsourced list of family-friendly videos (on GitHub?) managed by trusted collaborators and then a simple page that embeds only these videos? Over time I assume it should work given enough people contributing. It's not like the content needs to be kept continuously up to date either (unless old videos disappear faster than new ones are added).

vorpalhex 5y ago
Youtube tries to "hook" you. Between autoplay and recommended thumbnails (that can't be disabled) it's easy to get "hijacked". The worst part is that recommendations aren't in line with the content level of what you are viewing.
jannes 5y ago
Don’t even try. You would basically have to rewrite the entire YouTube client to get rid of all the dark patterns.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  It's already done though: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious https://github.com/iv-org/invidious
spanktheuser 5y ago
The problem is that the business model of YT kids contact creators contains incentives similar to those of SEO farms operating in the Google keyword ecosystem. Good content is shouldered aside by low effort, low value, high profit messaging.