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For our kids the big problem was youtube. Give them a game on their tablet and they are quickly collaborating on it. Give them a show and they will go see wha

For our kids the big problem was youtube. Give them a game on their tablet and they are quickly collaborating on it. Give them a show and they will go see what the other person is watching. After not too long (an hour or two) they are completely done and doing something else. But youtube is different. They can sit alone, in a corner, slack jawed, for 8 hours per day, only watching youtube, as they respond to all questions with only a vague grunt.

annoyingnoob 4y ago
Do not give them access to roblox, you won't even get a grunt.
agentwiggles 4y ago
Youtube has been essentially banned in my house after seeing the effect it had on my kids. The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Sadly - especially given the huge amount of actually great content on Youtube - everything that it wants to show my kids is absolutely dogshit garbage. A bunch of Gen Z kids with obviously wealthy families just acting like idiots. I couldn't stand it any more. I am, in general, a fairly permissive and liberal-minded parent. I had to put my foot down and have just disabled the site on the devices they use. It makes me sad because I know if they were directed to the right kinds of videos they could learn all kinds of things and be inspired by the creativity of the folks behind them. This is not what comes up in the feed and the content that they've become most interested in is the mental equivalent of eating off-brand Oreos for every meal. Hard pass.
- mhss 4y ago
  I largely agree, but I've not banned it. I just have explicitly told them they can only watch from the subscriptions we've curated. It requires monitoring of course, so they'll watch it on tv (Apple TV) when I'm present. My kids are young enough that they're never alone. Once they're not, I've been thinking if I can write a MITM proxy at home for youtube that somehow only allows content from explicit channels.
  - theGnuMe 4y ago
    >I've been thinking if I can write a MITM proxy at home for youtube that somehow only allows content from explicit channels. great idea!
  - MattDemers 4y ago
    You could probably run a Plex server with something like TubeSync that would download offline copies automatically; pair this with a metadata agent and you'd still get all the playlist/thumbnail/description stuff.
- mrexroad 4y ago
  Several kids in my household. YouTube plays a vastly different role for each, which is frustrating. Oldest goes down rabbit hole of topics of interest - benign useless filler stuff, e.g. mostly pro sports commentary, random things like Disney ride trivia, and other random pop-culture filler. If left unchecked, i wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 8+ hours on YouTube. If moderated, YouTube gives them a fair amount of stuff to talk and connect with others about in real life. Overall impact: neutral to slightly positive if moderated to <1h/day. Food/drink equivalent: Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel pieces (a few are great, but then you can’t stop and you end up eating 1500 calories and everything tastes wrong for 24h) Younger teen: will consume insane amounts of gaming videos, most of the creators border on toxic personalities. We’ve banned a number of channels for them, but they find other shitty personalities. I can’t stand the content they consume, but I chalk a fair bit of that to my ignorance about teen culture and mostly grit my teeth. Covid was the worst. I hate YouTube because of their content choices. However, it does provide a small basis of connection to their group of friends. [edit: I also stupidly made a deal that w/ straight A’s I won’t be overly restrictive, which they’ve upheld, sigh] Overall impact: toxic to the point where every month or two I’m convinced to ban YouTube across every device in the house. Food/drink equivalent: Natty Light that’s barely chilled. Pre-teen: by choice, they spend ~3/4 of their YouTube time learning new skills or facts. Mostly learning specific techniques in the iPad app Procreate, acrylic painting (irl), a ton of educational videos about wildlife/animals they love, etc. But more significantly, their YouTube use has created the reflex to “search first” whenever facing a knowledge/skill gap, then ask for help. They’re the only reason i don’t straight up block YouTube at the network level, for all devices. Overall impact: very positive. Food/drink equivalent: natto and rice.
  - aerovistae 4y ago
    Sounds to me like that younger teen needs an intervention, i.e. more oversight. I wouldn't grit my teeth and bare it on that.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      Is that because they’re not doing what you want? Or because it’s bad? They’re still scoring straight A’s in school.
- api 4y ago
  The YouTube algorithm seems to steer you toward absolute shit. Age doesn't matter. Try just following it as an adult and you will end up in the toilet pretty fast.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Does it? I feel like my son has been watching essentially the same 20-25 videos over and over again. Of course his youtube time is limited, but it doesn’t seem like it suggests anything but his three favorite channels.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. This is a problem for me too (an adult), I'm getting stronger at turning it off, but it's poison.
tootie 4y ago
My kids do this and I mostly just let them. They do well in school, have friends, are physically healthy. I was the same with TV and games at their age and now I'm living the life. Internet addiction can be an outlet for other unhealthy behavior but I don't think it's a cause.
speg 4y ago
We just added YouTube to my son’s iPad. In addition to a daily time limit we also locked his account down so he can only see videos that we explicitly add to his account.
api 4y ago
We banned YouTube for the same reason. It's honestly a bit terrifying how completely YouTube can entrance kids. You could probably kill a kid by sitting them in front of YouTube and they'd die of thirst or starvation. The content is absolute shit too. The YouTube algorithm steers them toward these weird repetitive videos and obnoxious fast-chattering gamer channels. There's a lot of interesting and enriching stuff on YouTube but the algorithm never steers them toward it. You might want to preemptively ban TikTok and Instagram too. I've been told by many parents they are absolute poison for teens. I've looked at them a bit and TikTok in particular is shockingly addictive even for adults. I was just checking it out and before I knew it I'd been scrolling for 45 minutes watching weird videos from randos. Banned it at the network level already just in case. We have really created a monster here with this addictionware stuff. It's not great for adults but for kids it's really toxic.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  tiktok is worse.
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- deleted 4y ago
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annoyingnoob 4y ago

Do not give them access to roblox, you won't even get a grunt.

agentwiggles 4y ago

Youtube has been essentially banned in my house after seeing the effect it had on my kids. The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Sadly - especially given the huge amount of actually great content on Youtube - everything that it wants to show my kids is absolutely dogshit garbage. A bunch of Gen Z kids with obviously wealthy families just acting like idiots. I couldn't stand it any more. I am, in general, a fairly permissive and liberal-minded parent. I had to put my foot down and have just disabled the site on the devices they use. It makes me sad because I know if they were directed to the right kinds of videos they could learn all kinds of things and be inspired by the creativity of the folks behind them. This is not what comes up in the feed and the content that they've become most interested in is the mental equivalent of eating off-brand Oreos for every meal. Hard pass.

mhss 4y ago
I largely agree, but I've not banned it. I just have explicitly told them they can only watch from the subscriptions we've curated. It requires monitoring of course, so they'll watch it on tv (Apple TV) when I'm present. My kids are young enough that they're never alone. Once they're not, I've been thinking if I can write a MITM proxy at home for youtube that somehow only allows content from explicit channels.
- theGnuMe 4y ago
  >I've been thinking if I can write a MITM proxy at home for youtube that somehow only allows content from explicit channels. great idea!
- MattDemers 4y ago
  You could probably run a Plex server with something like TubeSync that would download offline copies automatically; pair this with a metadata agent and you'd still get all the playlist/thumbnail/description stuff.
mrexroad 4y ago
Several kids in my household. YouTube plays a vastly different role for each, which is frustrating. Oldest goes down rabbit hole of topics of interest - benign useless filler stuff, e.g. mostly pro sports commentary, random things like Disney ride trivia, and other random pop-culture filler. If left unchecked, i wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 8+ hours on YouTube. If moderated, YouTube gives them a fair amount of stuff to talk and connect with others about in real life. Overall impact: neutral to slightly positive if moderated to <1h/day. Food/drink equivalent: Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel pieces (a few are great, but then you can’t stop and you end up eating 1500 calories and everything tastes wrong for 24h) Younger teen: will consume insane amounts of gaming videos, most of the creators border on toxic personalities. We’ve banned a number of channels for them, but they find other shitty personalities. I can’t stand the content they consume, but I chalk a fair bit of that to my ignorance about teen culture and mostly grit my teeth. Covid was the worst. I hate YouTube because of their content choices. However, it does provide a small basis of connection to their group of friends. [edit: I also stupidly made a deal that w/ straight A’s I won’t be overly restrictive, which they’ve upheld, sigh] Overall impact: toxic to the point where every month or two I’m convinced to ban YouTube across every device in the house. Food/drink equivalent: Natty Light that’s barely chilled. Pre-teen: by choice, they spend ~3/4 of their YouTube time learning new skills or facts. Mostly learning specific techniques in the iPad app Procreate, acrylic painting (irl), a ton of educational videos about wildlife/animals they love, etc. But more significantly, their YouTube use has created the reflex to “search first” whenever facing a knowledge/skill gap, then ask for help. They’re the only reason i don’t straight up block YouTube at the network level, for all devices. Overall impact: very positive. Food/drink equivalent: natto and rice.
- aerovistae 4y ago
  Sounds to me like that younger teen needs an intervention, i.e. more oversight. I wouldn't grit my teeth and bare it on that.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    Is that because they’re not doing what you want? Or because it’s bad? They’re still scoring straight A’s in school.
api 4y ago
The YouTube algorithm seems to steer you toward absolute shit. Age doesn't matter. Try just following it as an adult and you will end up in the toilet pretty fast.
Aeolun 4y ago
> The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Does it? I feel like my son has been watching essentially the same 20-25 videos over and over again. Of course his youtube time is limited, but it doesn’t seem like it suggests anything but his three favorite channels.
bamboozled 4y ago
The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. This is a problem for me too (an adult), I'm getting stronger at turning it off, but it's poison.

tootie 4y ago

My kids do this and I mostly just let them. They do well in school, have friends, are physically healthy. I was the same with TV and games at their age and now I'm living the life. Internet addiction can be an outlet for other unhealthy behavior but I don't think it's a cause.

speg 4y ago

We just added YouTube to my son’s iPad. In addition to a daily time limit we also locked his account down so he can only see videos that we explicitly add to his account.

api 4y ago

We banned YouTube for the same reason. It's honestly a bit terrifying how completely YouTube can entrance kids. You could probably kill a kid by sitting them in front of YouTube and they'd die of thirst or starvation. The content is absolute shit too. The YouTube algorithm steers them toward these weird repetitive videos and obnoxious fast-chattering gamer channels. There's a lot of interesting and enriching stuff on YouTube but the algorithm never steers them toward it. You might want to preemptively ban TikTok and Instagram too. I've been told by many parents they are absolute poison for teens. I've looked at them a bit and TikTok in particular is shockingly addictive even for adults. I was just checking it out and before I knew it I'd been scrolling for 45 minutes watching weird videos from randos. Banned it at the network level already just in case. We have really created a monster here with this addictionware stuff. It's not great for adults but for kids it's really toxic.

theGnuMe 4y ago
tiktok is worse.
- deleted 4y ago
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