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YouTube has become the world's nanny
- Havoc 4y agoSeems like something where one would want something like yt download. ie a local library of somewhat curated content
- theshrike79 4y agoNope, nope nope. My kid is 10 and still doesn't know a single Youtuber by name and doesn't really watch Youtube. We did try Youtube Kids at one point, but it was just 99% toy ads masquerading as authentic content. Netflix has a pretty good age limiter and well produced TV-shows. Disney+ has Bluey and a ton of other content. AppleTV+ has a few good ones too, but not as much as the two big ones. Paying the few coins for a streaming service w/ age limits is highly preferable to risking your kid ending up on some Elsagate[0] video because of the algorithm. Or ending up in a parasocial relationship to some screaming jumpcutting Youtuber who shills their merch on literal children. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
- est 4y agobut is there any better alternative?
- theshrike79 4y agoActual produced content, made by professionals who don't get paid per view or swag sales. Netflix and Disney+ have good content, you pay for it and they give you content. There is no parasocial relationship or algorithmic suggestions that direct the user to a dark hole of exploitative content. Most countries have a PBS equivalent, a non-commercial public broadcast channel that produces quality content without.
- gnz11 4y agoLet’s not kid ourselves, Netflix, Amazon, etc put out a ton of crap content too (e.g. Blippi). PBS Kids, KIKA, etc put out a lot of kids content on YouTube as well. Heck there’s a ton of great public media on YouTube in general. My subscription list is mostly public media from various countries and I don’t have the algorithm issues what most are describing here.
- grugagag 4y agoMy kid had a blippi phase but has moved on now. Blippi may monkey around but it’s educative after all. There are many other inane brain melting options to avoid
- password4321 4y agoNothing is perfect. Amazon Kids+ is a huge step up from YouTube, with curation and categorized time limits. They sell Kindle Fire hardware with a year's subscription included. https://www.amazon.com/ftu/home https://www.amazon.com/ftu/home ABCmouse advertises a lot, which is inversely correlated with effectiveness in my experience. https://www.abcmouse.com https://www.abcmouse.com
- gambiting 4y ago>>My kid is 10 and still doesn't know a single Youtuber by name Authentic curiosity - does your child not go to a normal school? In my experience you can literally detach your home from the internet and live without electricity, but the second your kids go to school they instantly know all the latest fads and videos and what not. To make it to 10 without being at least somewhat familiar with youtube through that exposure seems....almost impossible?
- jahsome 4y ago[flagged]
- einherjae 4y agoOne can be right and pretentious at the same time.
- sgdesign 4y agoHN's motto right there
- blitzar 4y agoIf they have school age children and their children are unaware of these things (or at least the parents believe that to be true) then either the parents are dumb or their children are incredible at deceiving their parents and possibly showing early signs of being psychopaths.
- watwut 4y agoOr just the kids learned parents react negatively when saying certain words and do not say them. That is not a sign of being psychopath, that is sign of being neurotypical.
- blitzar 4y agoThat sounds more like a parent that is totally disconnected from the reality of their child than a particularly deceptive child.
- candiddevmike 4y agoNo YouTube for my kids either. What's really freaky is that some kids in their grade (elementary school) have YouTube accounts and make videos supposedly! Also, Bluey is an incredible show. I'd probably watch it independently, the parents are hilarious.
- thih9 4y ago> We did try Youtube Kids at one point, but it was just 99% toy ads masquerading as authentic content. To be fair, this description fits a lot of regular (non-kids) platforms too.
- blitzar 4y agoMost "content" is made by "influencers" and thats kinda the point
- theshrike79 4y agoTrue, Transformers, He-Man and My Little Pony were just toy ads in cartoon form, but they were mostly honest about it. Youtube influencers form a "friendship" with the audience and are more sneaky/non-obvious about the stuff they're advertising, masking it as a "review" or something else. Just having a YT influencer play a game is a HUGE boost in sales.
- watwut 4y agoMy Little Pony has pretty serious storylines and developed characters. There is a reason why that particular show had rather full on fandom.
- theshrike79 4y agoThe new series yes. I'm old, so I'm speaking of the ye olde version that was ... not so good. =)
- quickthrower2 4y agoThe irony of the “gate” postfix, being such an old concept!
- GuB-42 4y ago> We did try Youtube Kids at one point, but it was just 99% toy ads masquerading as authentic content. Essentially like kids TV in the 80-90s. A lot of shows were made explicitly to sell toys, with Transformers being one of the best known. I don't know if it is still the case now.
- oogali 4y agoYes, but those 30 minute ads actually had content and you could enjoy them without the toy in hand. I briefly let my son watch YouTube Kids and soon his stream was endless unboxing videos or weird knockoff cartoons with no words. I’d gladly take 80-90s finite TV interspersed with PBS than infinite junk food.
- psychphysic 4y agoThe way children scream for my tablet time worse than they would for a bottle is terrifying. All those dopamine manipulation techniques made for adults are cleaning up with kids.
- grevrevr 4y agoFrankly, kids want what you have. If it's bad, don't use it yourself! Having kids was the final trigger to make me get rid of my smartphone, although I admit this is an extreme step.
- psychphysic 4y agoI'm gonna make a meme about a modern Harlow maternal contact experiment. It was about how monkeys prefer to hug cloth wrapped wire frames rather than food. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/obsonline/harlows-classic-studies-revealed-the-importance-of-maternal-contact.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/o...
- aidenn0 4y agoOne of the best things my wife and I did was have a "no phones at the table" rule for ourselves long before our kids were of an age to have a phone. It's made enforcing that rule on our teenagers a complete non-issue now.
- grevrevr 4y agoWe enforce that rule whenever we have guests (typically, family members). Obviously it doesn't need enforcing otherwise, as neither of us has a smart phone. What's interesting is the defensiveness people express when they are are called up on a social behaviour which would be completely unacceptable and weird a few years ago.
- superkuh 4y agoThe way these adults scream out long disproven neuroscience old wive's tales to justify their beliefs is terrifying. All these passive stimuli coming through your normal senses are not in any way hijacking or directly manipulating incentive salience or motivation. They're not drugs. Screen displays do not have the properties of drugs no matter what is displayed on them. Arguing that they do is ignorant and dangerous.
- moomoo11 4y agoWhy not just take ur kids on a hike on the weekend or read some books? Both are free (parks and libraries) and better than burning your kid’s eyeballs. Update: nobody wants to put in effort. No surprise there, poor kids :(
- pjmlp 4y agoEasy answer, it requires effort.
- thrown_43 4y agoBecause I can't fit a 3 hour hike in the car ride to school.
- moomoo11 4y agoLiterally said the weekend. Perfect example of declining critical thinking and reading comprehension.
- thrown_43 4y agoI can't fit a weekend in my car either.
- addandsubtract 4y agoYou're talking to the wrong car salesman. Find one that will slap the roof of the car and tell you it can fit so many weekend hikes into it.
- thfuran 4y agoI don't think any of my local dealerships carry Ferd Fteens.
- bearmode 4y agoYou can fit a book, though
- alex_suzuki 4y agoYouTube is terrifying. Ever since I read about people faking up Peppa Pig episodes with inappropriate content, I keep my two kids (3yr and 7yr) away from it. Edit: „Elsagate“ seems to be the appropriate term. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39381889.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-39381889.amp
- ttyyzz 4y agoSadly, the internet is a great place for psychopaths / sadistic people.
- shmde 4y agoThere is a lot of gacha content too. Inappropriate cartoons that look like furry animation, that was some weird rabbit hole I went into. And many of those had the "cannot minimize it because it is kids content." I think it's best to download content to usb stick and plug it in the tv. You know your kids would probably be safer that way.
- revolvingocelot 4y agoElsagate is only going to get worse with the advent of AI-powered content. We're already at the point where passable robo-Seinfeld is possible...
- arcturus17 4y agoYea I don’t have kids but I’ve seen it with all kids in my extended family. I like Youtube, there is content of tremendous value, for knowledge and entertainment. However, one thing I’ve personally observed is that too much of it can destroy your focus and motivation. There is some science in there about brain chemistry and reward systems, in line with what some pop scientists with Cal Newport and Andrew Huberman are preaching. I don’t know the details of said science, and I don’t feel like I need to, because my own experience and observations have cemented a strong belief that an excessive usage of the proverbial bottomless digital wells (be it Youtube or other usual suspects) have deleterious effects on focus, motivation, and happiness. I can only imagine the effects on the developing brain. But again, I don’t know the science so maybe the answer is “a kid’s brain is so malleable that there is nothing to worry about”. Wouldn’t that be convenient for big tech? Well I for one, am not going to take risks. If I ever have kids I am not going to deprive them of watching a bit of Youtube or playing Mario. But there are going to be some serious authoritarian vibes around time limits and sequencing (ie, only after you’ve fulfilled your obligations)
- peepee1982 4y agoI'd think a kid's brain's malleability is reason to limit bottomless pits even more strictly. As a father of three I know it's not always convenient. But kids usually find something else to do at some point. It's just really grating to wait that long.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- boppo1 4y agoI started using bottomless digital wells at 9 years old and it has led to compulsive browsing behavior with severely negative long-term consequences for my life.
- arcturus17 4y ago> it has led to compulsive browsing behavior with severely negative long-term consequences for my life If I can offer practical advice that has worked for me in pulling me back from bad browsing habits: 1. Meditate ~10min every morning 2. Start a reading habit, even if it's modest (start with 10 pages a day) 3. Create physical barriers between you and devices: 3.1. Do not sleep with a device in the room (if you use it as an alarm clock buy an analog one) 3.2. Physically remove non-indispensable devices (TV, console, any extra screens) from around you, if only temporarily (put them in storage, give them to a friend for keeping) 4. Write a to-do list with objectives for the next day in the evenings, then revise it in the mornings after waking up 5. Pick up some exercise, preferrably with a social obligation (ie, an instructor, a group). The latter may be important because as an experienced weightlifter I can say that it's way too easy to do solo sessions where you're constantly slacking around and looking at your phone. 6. Quit other vices (eg, drinking) temporarily Many of these have nothing to do with browsing, but that's precisely what does it for me. Artificially limiting browsing (by using apps, timeboxing, etc.) does not work at all for me and I need to work on adjacent goals to build my chemistry back up.
- phillc73 4y agoI guess a lot of people must be using YouTube in a different way to how we do. We do allow our 8-year-old to sometimes watch YouTube, after the homework is finished or if sick. What does he watch? Things like.... * 40-50 year old Russian language cartoons, to help with his language learning. * Quite a few British shows like Edwardian Farm[1], Victorian Farm[2] and Wartime Farm. Pretty educational stuff. * Documentaries about stuff he's interested in. At one point it was Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory, another time it was the Cutty Sark[3]. He went through a real tall ships period. We followed this up last summer by visiting both the Victory in Portsmouth and the Cutty Sark in London. It was amazing the way he was able to point things out on the real ships, because he'd watched the documentaries. * Ski racing. He's mad for it. Races himself on weekends and obsesses with who is winning the World Cup races. Mikaela Shiffrin hitting the record was a big moment. We never see any adverts on there. I don't know why, maybe something to do with a combination of uBlock Origin and Linux. We do have a Netflix subscription, because I enjoy watching a few shows on there, but we've never watched anything in the Kids section, because it's 95% crap. So from our perspective, YouTube is quite a reasonable educational tool, when used under supervision and in moderation. Edit: I forgot the Australian stuff we watch together! Bush Tucker Man[4] and Fishing the Wild[5] are two worth mentioning. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_Farm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorian_Farm [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcsZHOD9P8E&list=PL7HSPnTFVAuFQkVzs3KzXjGXO78x-0HNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcsZHOD9P8E&list=PL7HSPnTFVA... [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1xGBPQlH_A&list=PLvP8XBCt3LyoMi_o_TfA_UJyDVaHSXbpu https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1xGBPQlH_A&list=PLvP8XBCt3L...
- nmfisher 4y agoAs a new(ish) parent, I'm astonished at how readily most parents hand off their kids over to YouTube/tablet/phone. I even saw a stroller the other day with a permanent mount for the phone. I haven't banned YouTube (yet), but I have limited it almost completely due to concerns about the long-term effects of extended use from such an early age. Those concerns will only deepen as my son gets older - there's a lot of good content on YouTube but it's sitting under a mountain of mindless, click-bait, influencer drivel.
- cmsj 4y agoI tried YouTube Kids a few years ago, the experience was not great - content isn't pre-screened, so weird stuff can slip through the cracks. It's also obviously not being maintained with a sincere attempt to solve the problems that parents actually have - for example, as your kid gets older and they get a google account, they can't sign in to YouTube Kids, you have to sign in with an Adult account, but then that account is on their iPad and available to any other Google apps they have installed. Parental restrictions on Google accounts also don't let you easily limit a child's account to an allowlist of approved channels. I would love to let my kids use their daily screen time to learn/enjoy a mix of channels my wife and I have vetted, but it's excruciatingly difficult to actually do this, to the point that I've given up trying. Our approach has ended up being that when the kids ask to watch a youtube video about something, we send them a link to a video via iMessage - watching the video in the Messages app shows just the video, no comments, no "suggested" videos, and it's sufficiently high friction to get us to do it that they don't ask very often. My next experiment will be using https://github.com/Tzahi12345/YoutubeDL-Material https://github.com/Tzahi12345/YoutubeDL-Material to download videos from our allowlisted channels, but I super resent that I'm having to engineer solutions to Google's disinterest.
- itsoktocry 4y ago>content isn't pre-screened, so weird stuff can slip through the cracks You can individually add channels with acceptable content, so unless you're adding sketchy channels, nothing is going to slip through. >as your kid gets older and they get a google account, they can't sign in to YouTube Kids I feel like by the time a child needs their own Google account they have moved beyond YouTube Kids, no?
- alexashka 4y ago'Smart'-phones have become defacto pacifiers for teenagers and adults alike. Children are merely imitating adult behaviour. If you don't want your kids pacified their entire lives, make sure you're not pacified yourself first.
- sgt 4y agoAnd it continues into adulthood. Millions of adults being swallowed up in YouTube and streaming services for hours every day. Why bother to go outside? That can't be good either.
- midoridensha 4y agoThey shouldn't be going outside, at least while they're kids: they can get their parents arrested! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34625907 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34625907
- petepete 4y agoThis is where the BBC (CBeebies and CBBC in particular) is worth its weight in gold. I have trust in their programming.
- ciropantera 4y agoHow are these channels monetized? I heard a while back that YouTube kids had no ads or heavily restricted them. Did something change there?
- watwut 4y agoEveryone I have known who tried YouTube kids eventually ended up with normal YouTube. Maybe it is sort of acceptable for English speaking families, but outside of that, shows that parents wanted to show the kids or were ok with were not available. And shows that were available were meh anyway. It came across to me as something that exists so that google can point out that it exists.
- watwut 4y agoIf I have to sum up everything about kid related entertainment I have read on here, it would be: - Games of the kind we have played or we like to play now are good. - The new markets kind of games are totally worst thing ever and steal money. - Arcades and collectible card games we used to spend all our money into were totally different thing. - The kiddy shows we grew up with were best thing ever. Nothing beats them and they have no fault. - New shows targeted at kids are all totally boring. All the kids being into them are wrong and don't have fun. - If current world contains something inappropriate or dangerous that did not existed before, it is outrage and needs to be stopped. - However, the loss old inappropriate or downright dangerous things we grew up with will harm humanity forever. It is outrage that kids today have everything sanitized. Except stuff from the previous point that should not exist.
- einherjae 4y agoHypocrisy in itself doesn’t invalidate the point about the modern entertainment stuff being problematic. Even if what we grew up with had its own problems.
- watwut 4y agoI was not pointing to hypocrisy. I was pointing to nostalgia and catastrophization being primary drivers of these discussions.
- jahsome 4y agoThe most unbelievable thing about this site is to me the inability of users to recognize their language and aversion to, well, everything, is the same carbon copied rhetoric every generation has used to deride the technological Boogeyman of the day.
- jackvalentine 4y agoI take your point, but isn’t it possible that every generation was right because they feared that one day we’d go too far and weren’t sure if we were at that point yet? And one day, we may go too far. We might have already.
- lordgrenville 4y agoI don't let my kids watch YouTube, but I sometimes watch with them. There is a whole world of incredibly wholesome farmer YouTubers, showing off their day-to-day life. I also use Invidious.
- prawn 4y agoThis is the key. There is excellent content on YouTube, but we don't let them watch by themselves and have explained the risks of algorithms to the older two children. There's loads of stuff that is entertaining for children and parents watching together - Mark Rober, craft videos, draw-along channels, cabin building, hobby farming, streetfood, etc. Usually I will pre-vet a video myself or get a feel for the style of a channel to decide whether it's reliable or not.
- jmyeet 4y agoThere’s a deeper issue I personally find more interesting; there are an awful lot of parents who don’t really want children. Maybe they like the idea of being a parent. Maybe they just found themselves there. Maybe they think this is what they’re supposed to do. There’s no doubt a multitude of reasons. The window for shaping what kind of people your children become is surprisingly short. It’s largely over by the time they start elementary school. It’s completely over by high school. I wonder how many people are just using YouTube as a stopgap until they’re children are mini-adults, which is what many parents seem to want (IME).
- kasperni 4y agoFor people cooking alone with a kid. How do you entertain them while cooking without screentime? Kid is 16 months. Too old to lie still, and too young to help out in any capacity without getting injured. Edit: Letting them play with utensils gives me about 2-3 minutes.
- drekipus 4y agoIs the kid not capable of quietly playing with their toys? Not making any judgement but I truly think that parenting is a two-person job.
- watwut 4y agoAt that age, it is pretty much random. Some kids yes, some not and most of them are in the middle - sometimes yes and other times no. Their attention span is very small, so basically no child will play alone long enough for you to cook. You cant really force it to happen in any case. Sometimes you cook while fighting the kid and that is that.
- kasperni 4y ago> Is the kid not capable of quietly playing with their toys? You don't have kids right?
- eggsmediumrare 4y agoParenting is a many person job but we've decided to incorrectly model our society around the idea that it's a <=2 person job.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoSmall kids get bored quickly. They play with any given toy the same way I listen to songs: without stopping, until saturation, and then infrequently or not at all. Whether this will last 20 minutes or 2 hours or 2 days - it's kinda random. Even if you give the kid a completely new toy, chances are, they won't get interested immediately. Or even the same day. Parenting is definitely 2+ person job. At the very least, it's a full-time job for one person.
- 4y ago
- i67vw3 4y agoTwo of my sisters have in total 3 kids (4 to 6 years old) and all three of them need to watch youtube videos while eating. Just few days back, my sister had a 'gathering' to announce her 2nd child (making it total 4 kids combined) and the 3rd kid needed to watch few youtube videos (usually they are of other kids playing or doing some stuff) to eat his dinner, which I found quite odd. This thing is not only related to my sisters kids but for every new kid born in recent years, they will not eat 'peacefully' without youtube. Also, TV cannot be used, it needs to be youtube where real kids are playing. Edit:- Found the channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCmSidxfQmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCmSidxfQmY Part of reason I 'think' is that these new kids born were not allowed to visit outside, leave home, make friends with neighbours kids, visit other families during Corona crisis and lockdown and they sub-consciously got attached to watching other kids doing fun things on youtube. Someone should look into this as they are not watching Peppa Pig on youtube (which is also a kids show with characters as kids) but other human kids playing.
- brozaman 4y agoI don't think it's so much not being allowed to be outside but the education that they got, the confinement ended 2 years ago and kinds have very flexible brains. My older niece will be 5 next month and she is NEVER allowed to have cartoons while eating and she doesn't do it and doesn't miss it. However one of my best friends has a kid born the same month and she always has a phone every time I see her. I also tell you that if I have a child of my own they aren't trying fucking ketchup, the thing with my niece and ketchup isn't even close to reasonable. Kids can get a nasty habit very easily, youtube, ketchup, etc. Pretty much everything can become a problem if it's not cut down.
- fragmede 4y agoThe "solution" is to not expose them to YouTube in the first place. Worked so far, for several families I know.
- quickthrower2 4y agoAnd/or be “the bad guy” who implements rules and limits
- HlessClaudesman 4y agoAs a parent, screen time vs no screen time is a fine line that we have to continually renegotiate. Screens can be great, there is so much good information out there that can enrich our lives. I wouldn't go the "no screens ever" route because that's just being a luddite, robbing them of the change to experience, and acquire expertise in, the digital world that they will be interacting with for the rest of their lives. However, I am not letting my kid roam the internet, there be dragons. In particular YouTube's recommendation algorithm, even in their YouTube kids app, seems to default to serving up horrible brain melting crap instead of anything pedagogical. I am against kids content that is designed solely to entrance and keep them sitting still, it's the equivalent of digital candy floss. For example, the whole "surprise egg" trend, which basically is a video version of the lootbox / Deal Or No Deal, mechanic, is some of the most popular and recommended videos to children on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=surprise+egg https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=surpris... All three of the frist vids we were served by YouTube kids were surprise egg videos. Hard uninstall. Curating content and setting limits on screen time is your job as a parent in this era. We cannot outsource this responsibility to companies and AIs because there is simply no way an algorithm find the stuff that is just right for your child.
- bbor 4y agoI’d argue that our current algorithms can absolutely find the right stuff for your child, its just not in their financial interest to do so. Sad stuff from capitalism, as always.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoThat's it exactly; surprise egg videos get repeat views, kids open them up and just hyperfocus and/or zone out on them for hours on end; it's low energy watching. Give them something intellectualy stimulating though, and they'll have brain drain after a while and be too tired to keep watching that kind of content. Bad for revenue, it's better to have them accrue those minutes watched counters all the time.
- alexvoda 4y agoThere is absolutely no technical reason this problem could not be solved. It is not a technical issue. It is a human issue. Just like most issues of modern society.
- blitzar 4y agoTo my grandparents / great grandparents generation at the time (70/80's) TV has become the world's nanny would have generated all the same comments as this. If you watched tv - the idiotbox - for more than 15 minutes your eyes would go square.
- 878654Tom 4y agoThat is simply not true, with television you also had the panic of "brain rot" but at least you could still trust public television networks with not showing dubious content. Youtube for kids seems to be a rabbithole place where you end up with "Spiderman kisses Anna", very obvious advertisements or very trippy shows while on public television you had kid shows with educative touch on them (a visit to the forest, children songs,...) I allow my children to watch a very curated list of things and free reign on the Belgian "kids channel" but Youtube? Never.
- tigerlily 4y agoI don't know about you, but I spent a long time staring at cathode ray tubes when I was a kid and I think it certainly affected my cognition.
- tazjin 4y agoThe other difference is that with public TV there will be moments where it shows stuff the kids couldn't care less about, and they'll go do something else. With limitless online streaming, there is always something to keep their attention.
- simiones 4y agoThere were plenty of cartoon-only and kids-only TV channels when I was growing up. Of course, I sometimes got bored of the shows, but kids also sometimes get bored of YT.
- simiones 4y agoCartoon Network for example has always had advertising aimed at children, and some shows that definitely was considered dubious in my household growing up (in far away Romania), such as Cow and Chicken and that show's obsession with butts. And there was generally no educative touch to these shows, they were mostly interested in children's entertainment. The same was true for most cartoon shows I saw growing up - they usually didn't contain explicitly educational content, though of course they were incomparable in quality to things like the spam on YT Kids.
- athoscouto 4y agoAt this point, it seems common knowledge that overuse of YouTube and social media can have long-term effects on attention, etc. (I would appreciate references here, if anyone has it) But do we know how we that relates with other stuff like TV or videogames? It would be interesting to see a study comparing how they affect children growing up, or even adults.
- Barrin92 4y agowhat was surprising to me when I first accidentally stumbled into kids youtube a few years ago by accident was how, for a lack of a better term, fucking weird it is. For example this video from the mentioned channel in the article: https://youtu.be/D1LDPmYoYm4 https://youtu.be/D1LDPmYoYm4 I don't know what makes this so uncanny, maybe it's the budget animation combined with the nursery rhyme but I can't imagine wanting to watch this as a kid. It's also incredibly bizarre what numbers these videos pull. Was one of the first moments where I felt completely out of touch.
- watwut 4y agoAnecdotally, my kids liked music videos like these a lot. And lol, this one is practically prison break. Part of what drives huge view numbers tho is that small kids like to watch the same thing again and again and again. Easily, one kid can account for 1000 of views over few months. That is why stuff like "10 hours same song" exists.
- ChewFarceSkunk 4y agoPeople not seeing anything sinister in these infinite loops of "content" are baffling me. These loops, the very loopy quality of those things get burned into infant subconscious, and that's no small deal. I once watched my nephew, 3 yo, having what I can best describe as a psychotic breakdown, hysterically crying out the same word, 'cartoon', interleaved with convulsive grasping for air, every few seconds for an hour straight, like a machine, when he was deprived of 'cartoons' as a penalty for his 'bad behavior', and nobody, including his mom, my sister, who spinelessly managed to outsource his upbringing to YT, could pull him out of that loop. That was really scary to see. Imagine YT going instantly offline worldwide, what would happen to all those poor little cartoon burnouts?
- watwut 4y ago3 years old having temper tamptrumps were thing long before TV and youtube. I know, because books written long before that feature kids having hysterical temper tamptrums. And I assume so because I have seen kids aged 2-4 having issue like that and know for a fact that their parents did not run them loop videos (or any videos at all). > Imagine YT going instantly offline worldwide, what would happen to all those poor little cartoon burnouts? They will cry for a while and then they will adjust to the new world. > and nobody, including his mom, my sister, who spinelessly managed to outsource his upbringing to YT, could pull him out of that loop I dont know your sister. I dont know whether she always give in or whether she was not in mood for listening it or whether she specifically gave him video so that your visit can continue as normal.
- kefka_p 4y agoI was raised on tech. A third generation computer user, started writing software at seven under my father’s guidance. A Luddite I am not, but this doesn’t bode well for our future. YouTube is basically an indoctrination engine for white nationalism. It’s more or less what the right claims the American higher education system is for the left, only there’s no conspiracy fantasy to it. https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/youtube_algorithm_conservative_content/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/18/youtube_algorithm_con...
- npteljes 4y agoWikipedia also documents it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right_pipeline Or if someone rather likes the article format: https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2022/10/31/addressing-the-alt-right-pipeline/ https://bpr.berkeley.edu/2022/10/31/addressing-the-alt-right...
- simiones 4y agoThe actual findings, as reported in the very link you post: > "We found that YouTube's recommendation algorithm does not lead the vast majority of users down extremist rabbit holes, although it does push users into increasingly narrow ideological ranges of content in what we might call evidence of a (very) mild ideological echo chamber," the academics disclosed in a report for the Brookings Institution. > "We also find that, on average, the YouTube recommendation algorithm pulls users slightly to the right of the political spectrum, which we believe is a novel finding." So, about as close to being an "indoctrination engine for white nationalism" as a librarian that recommends books you like. And I am saying this as someone who reads Jacobin and watches any interview with Chomsky I can find.
- kefka_p 4y ago“Pulls users slightly to the right” So the indoctrination isn’t obvious? So it’s subtle? That makes it more pernicious, in my eyes. I never said anything about a vast majority. To indoctrinate doesn’t mean convert an entire population, or even a percentage thereof. On the contrary, it refers to a process of teaching a person or group (of any size) to accept a set of beliefs uncritically. It doesn’t specify what degree of beliefs have to change, nor how rapidly, or severely. YT recommends Fox, Shapiro, et al to kids watching anime, to adults whose sole interests are cat videos and programming tutorials. A bit different than a librarian suggesting books one might like. And what happens if the librarian sees I’ve been checking out the likes of Mein Kampf, and makes recommendations based on that? Does indoctrination through multiple channels cancel itself out, or some? I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make there but it sounds a lot like “bad things can happen in other places so it’s acceptable if YouTube does bad things too. One should consider the effect on those already radicalized in addition to the indoctrination of the non-radicalized when seeking to understand the political ramifications of such bias in algorithms. It’s not like they exist in a vacuum, after all. edit: Add to that, on the topic of librarians, the decentralized nature of libraries and librarians ensures any effect of a single librarian will be limited to a local area. Don’t think we can say the same for YouTube algorithms.
- nix23 4y ago>YouTube replaced the TV to be the world's nanny Corrected the Title.
- KaiserPro 4y agoThere is no way that I am letting my kids have unattended access to youtube. Without careful shepherding its a gateway to some really quite nasty stuff. Not to mention the fucking adverts for stuff. I get pestered enough for stuff they see in advert breaks for the TV. We lost the battle with netflix et al for my kids years ago. But they have a time limit because other nothing else gets done. More specifically, they are either watching stuff on the screen or doing something, never both.
- martin-adams 4y agoWe've just had to stop our kids watching TV at all for a few weeks. They were getting addicted to YouTube. But their mood has been so much better without it. They've been playing more and talk to us more. As a parent, regulating screen time is a battle of wits. The app is designed to you hooked. I would absolutely love them to have the option to "shutdown after the end of this video".
- robertlagrant 4y agoI physically removed our only television from the lounge to behind some furniture because our eldest (who was 6) was behaving more and more like a drug addict: alternating wheedling, begging, pleading, shouting, to get television. Once I did that, and he saw it really wasn't an option, he changed quite quickly - after around 3 months - and we have it back now, although there's no screen time except weekends (or if someone's ill). Seems to be working so far. Zero YouTube, though. Don't trust it. Might revisit at some point, but even then I'd want the paid version to remove ads.
- alxmng 4y agoBut do you watch YouTube or use screens around him? That's my problem with the advice to limit screen time. Why should I be telling my child not to do something that everyone around him is doing?
- notinfuriated 4y agoBecause a child doesn't know when to stop. As an adult, I can always feel the pull of real life. If I keep watching YouTube or playing video games I know it's going to impact my job, wife, kid, etc. Some adults aren't even that good at regulating this, but I think kids are, on average, way worse about it. Many don't know real consequences or regrets for failing to manage their time. Although I'll admit I do agree with your comment in the sense that I think I should stop using YouTube entirely. People are discussing how it can really mess with a kid's brain, and I don't feel like I'm immune as an adult. Yes, I have more discipline than a child, but this feels like it can be a cheap acknowledgement made as a rationalization, like a chainsmoker saying his lungs are stronger than a kid's, or an alcoholic saying the same of their liver.
- grugagag 4y agoMany adults don’t know how to stop either. The UI/UX is tailored exactly for that purpose, to make you consume as much as possible. This is my problem with youtube kids, the content may be okay but priming for later is still going on.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoYouTube is the best invention in modern history. While working I can passively listen to thousands of ideas in a year often curated by my interests automatically. We don't teach people how to use these things well but we should.
- snhly 4y agoUnless this is sarcasm, I completely disagree. Listening to thousands of ideas inevitably lowers the value you attach to each one, and lowers the barrier of entry for what ideas you hear.
- isthisthingon99 4y ago"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." This is how I exercise that skill. I listen to science, sociology, religion, conspiracy theories, relationship dynamics, etc. Sometimes, I pick up something. Most of the time I'm allowing the ideas to float around in my head. It helps a lot to practice this skill, because I trade for a living and I need to be able to convince myself that I am wrong about something all the time.
- snhly 4y agoYeah, but receiving ideas non-stop isn't really "listening" to them. A more accurate description of that passive activity would be "hearing". I get that surrounding yourself by interesting ideas and conversations is a nice passive way of entertaining potentially alternative views. But there are way better setups in which to do this. The YouTube algorithm is unlikely to challenge you to the same extent of, say, organising a family dinner where the racist uncle or communist cousin are in attendance.
- isthisthingon99 4y agoOK
- ElCapitanMarkla 4y agoIt really annoys me that there isn't an option to block certain youtube channels. There is loads of fantastic content on youtube, and the kids love it. But when you set them up with something and come back and crap like this with 278M views is playing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4xFWIKVT6s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4xFWIKVT6s They turn into zombies watching that crap.
- ChewFarceSkunk 4y agoAnd the world will surely pay a price.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoOh, I didn't realize CoComelon was that popular, much less top-grossing YouTube channel in America. Our older kid (3.5yo now) has been listening to and occasionally watching their videos, which we picked just because - unlike most others we could find - they weren't weird or disturbing. We obviously don't let our kid listen to, or watch, those music videos on YouTube. That would be crazy! We use YouTube only as a content discovery mechanism, and if the kids get to see any of it, it's under our experienced supervision[0]. Normally, we identify quality songs and videos[1], and then use youtube-dl (yt-dlp these days) to create an offline-playable, ad-free copy (usually with a pass through Audacity or ffmpeg to fix quality issues and strip out channel jingles, baked-in ads, and other annoyances). We then put those songs and videos on a spare phone that's not connected to the Internet, and use that for music and occasional screen time. I honestly can't imagine doing it any other way. Yes, maybe the yt-dlp way isn't the most kosher, but there isn't an option I know of that I could pay for that doesn't have ads, questionable content and/or randomly risky autoplay. (Relevant context: we're in Poland, but we're exposing our kids to ~50/50 mix of English and Polish songs so they're being constantly exposed to both languages.) -- [0] - I can't stress this enough: giving YouTube to small children requires constant monitoring of a person who understands how it works. For example, the other day we left our daughter with her grandpa and allowed him to play her music videos from his phone. Half an hour later, we had to carefully explain to him, that just because the video that just finished playing had Peppa the Pig on it, doesn't mean that the disco rap song on that video, praising sexual conquest and drug abuse, is suddenly OK for a 3.5 y.o. [1] - Again, you really need to watch a given video yourself first to be sure it's OK for the kids. The first time we exposed our kid to music videos, there was that one song about a fox we played, that seemed all fine until we reached a scene featuring said fox having a shotgun pressed to its head, begging for life to the farmer that caught it. That was the first and the last time I didn't watch the video end-to-end before showing it to my kid.
- b0afc375b5 4y agoPutting aside the morality of it, I wish we could study a case where twins are raised differently: 1. one where youtube (or any form of media under the sun) is part of daily life, 2. and another where youtube (and any alternative image/video/audio/social media) is completely removed. Really what I'm asking for is the 21st century version of the identical twin study: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/identical-twins-raised-in-different-countries/ https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/identical-twins-raised-in-di... I wonder how different their dispositions would be.
- amelius 4y agoOkay, but it shouldn't be N=1, otherwise it's just anecdotal.
- calme_toi 4y agoIt is so often I see kids sitting in buggy chairs wearing headphone with a phone. It always makes me really really sad and I don't know why. My colleague told me they started with zero screen time for their kids but eventually give up because sometimes it's the only way to have a quite dinner.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoYouTube is actively harmful to children, it’s full of crap content, endless ads and the algorithm takes you to the darkest pits in no time at all. You like paw patrol? How about some videos of the pups killing each other? And kids love candy (brain candy) even if it is of no nutritional value - at this age they don’t know better. We found that no amount of supervision or curation by adults keeps the child completely away from this harmful content. And the YouTube Kids thing is not offered in our region. For us the only solution was to ban YouTube entirely and it’s one of the best decisions we ever made.
- theshrike79 4y agoThere is good educational stuff on Youtube, but you need to actively look for it in the sea of shit. These two are in my favourites: https://www.youtube.com/@dianxixiaoge https://www.youtube.com/@dianxixiaoge https://www.youtube.com/@cnliziqi https://www.youtube.com/@cnliziqi Liziqi had some issues with her production company and stopped doing new videos, and her stuff was WAY too cutesy to be real. Dianxi is more "authentic", but still relaxing to watch.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoYeah the point is that a young child is not going to “actively look” - they just follow the trail of candy until they end up in the witches’ house :(
- gnz11 4y agoThat goes back to curation and oversight by the parents though.
- pushingice 4y agoWe use YouTube premium (so no ads) and there have been no snuff films of the pups. But my kids know not only all of the planets, but all of the dwarf planets. I sure didn't teach them that.
- aantix 4y ago
- aurelien 4y agoA reason why the YouTube algorithm to idiocraty is a problem.
- Quarrelsome 4y agoI think its quite immoral to advertise to children given many forms of advertisement are manipulative. That this now happens globally en-masse is a failure of the species. It's a shame because I would love to get into this industry given my skill set is a perfect fit and entertaining children is fun and rewarding, but that its driven by advertising makes the notion abhorrent.
- pard68 4y agoHappy to say that I am a father of four and have no clue what CoComelon is. Our solution to "screen time" has been an hour of Sonic or Kirby on the weekend and educational-only videos during the week which have something to do with whatever they are talking about or learning that day. For example, our kitchen has a number of large windows and the birds love to eat in front of it. My five year old has become obsessed with birds and specifically sparrows. My wife found a Youtube video about sparrows, it was a powerpoint with voice-over, and the kids ate that up. I think that tech and especially videos/games can be very dangerous. I wasted days of my life in grade school playing Halo 2 and later GTA and COD. I wish that my parents had attempted to restrict my time. I also think tech can be really useful for parents to help teach beyond their skillset. Just the line you walk between this too is very tricky.
- hjkl0 4y agoPlaying games at grade school age - is that a waste?
- pard68 4y agoI reckon so. I got an Xbox in 7th grade. By the time I was in 9th I was devoting all my free time to Halo and such. Could have been working or playing or riding a bike or a myriad of better things that'd have bettered me somehow. Instead... I can double shot and no-scope well.
- oblio 4y agoYeah, it's even a waste later on. I could have been a middle manager, at least, if I'd used all those thousands of hours I spent managing teenagers in Dota 1/2 and WoW to work on my career or do sports or read or whatever...
- efields 4y ago(US-centric take) Everyone’s parenting journey is different. YouTube can play a part, or not. Maybe a doctor’s appointment comes up and you have to watch the kids for a few hours. You can go through the toys and games you have and maybe all will go well for a few hours and things will be great. Or maybe things are running longer than your stamina and you need to put on Ms. Rachel and leave the room for a half hour and regain your sanity. Or you can pay a nanny to endlessly entertain your kids sans screens. Money isn’t an object for you and someone is willing to do the job for $20/hour and hopefully they never get sick or have care needs of their own. You can also live in the woods and homeschool your kids and teach them long division with acorns and berries while your husband hunts game. You, personally, yes you, unless you’ve actually studied this as your profession, have no relevant insight to the lives of parents writ large when the society we’ve built invests little in early childhood care needs. I literally know what’s best for my children based on the things I know about their lives. We’ll deploy YouTube as needed. We’ll use iPad on the potty if it helps with that process. We’ll do our best. Please, just, don’t make broad commentary on how to raise kids in 21st century America. It’s not helpful.
- t0bia_s 4y agoNecessary plugin for YT: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-recom... Or program: https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ Both let you disable autoplay, suggestions, trendings, ads... I would never let kids watch YT with autoplay, suggestions on side and ads.
- ok123456 4y agoAnd, TV was the baby sitter of the last three generations. The technologies aren't 1:1, but letting your kids passively consume video seems is just as popular as ever.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoAnd before that children were roaming around the streets for 12 hours because the apartments were too small for 7+ people.
- somenameforme 4y agoI think there's one huge difference. TV gets boring, fast. The only time it would remain remotely entertaining was Saturday morning. And even that would get boring relatively quickly. And so you end up turning to other things to entertain yourself, or just be bored. Both of which are probably much better for one's development. YouTube can probably provide entertainment to a child for an arbitrary length of time, on demand, anywhere. So I don't think it's especially comparable to TV. It also seems to trigger behavior that seems borderline addictive in many people - let alone children. Ultimately I expect online media of this sort will probably be treated in a way analogous to something like drugs or gambling, whereas right now we're just living through "Let's put cocaine in everything, because it feels goooooood!" phase.
- superkuh 4y agoWhat? Youtube is exactly like television. The only significant difference is that it includes a comment section where people can interact. I don't think that makes it worse. And it is certainly not analogous to drugs. Trying to compare the stimuli of looking at a screen is entirely different from taking drugs that bypass your senses completely to hijack the neuronal populations which determine the salience and motivation of stimuli. Stop comparing passive watching through normal senses to drugs. They are not the same. Saying they are the same invites the same kind of highly immoral "war" against "screens" which would necessarily involve violence of the state against people.
- 4y ago
- cafard 4y agoNetwork television says, "They never write! They never call!"
- culebron21 4y agoI'm not American, so I don't know how much people can afford -- a nanny, or not working for one parent. I can afford my wife not working, but we don't even try to hire a nanny, because we don't know if she won't give the child a gadget, and because the thing little children need the most are us, parents. So we're biting the bullet and doing home duties ourselves. The gadget seems a solution to a lot of things. For example, cooking with my toddler, or dressing him for a walk is a pain in the neck, and the phone could ease the process. I see parents give gadgets to their 3-6y-olds on bus, just to avoid them asking stupid questions every 10 seconds and pointing finger at everything. The problem with this is that gadget use goes down a spiral: the child will beg for more in other moments, when the phone is not needed. (Someone writes they can't feed kids without gadgets -- I suspect bringing gadgets to the table was the reason for this in the first place.) I know parents of 3yo kids who barely speak, because parents just gave them the gadget and to mind their own business. We tried an offline phone, and the addiction effect was the same. I'd also love to read or do hobby code project at home in the evening instead of playing/watching my son. Or I'd do stuff about my career -- read vacancies, send resumes, tec. So untill the time the kid grows up to play by himself, a phone or staying out of home till late evening would have solved this. The problem with this is that one day I'll come home, and see a 15-year-old guy ask who the hell this man is. And when else am I supposed to build relations with the child? These several years when phones can distract kids will be brief for us, adults. (I still remember jokes and funny vids from 2011, and perceive it as not long ago). But they'll be an infinity for the kids. So, I'll do this without the gadget. If dressing up for a walk takes longer, we'll just stay outdoors a bit less. There's no deadline there. Hobby projects can wait -- I abandoned a lot of them. Board gaming parties, or bar with beer also can wait. All this can wait. I'm minimizing gadget time with my son. Not because the eyesight or motility issues, but because it's a downward spiral that in the end destroys our relations too. I'm not having a phone "dry law" -- I videocall my parents with the son -- but otherwise I minimize screen time (I don't use phone on bus or subway myself). These precious years, when our kids are fully with us, won't happen again ever.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThis strategy is hard to do if you add an another kid to the mix within the first 3 to 4 years. The baby will suck up so much resources that between baby, cleaning, cooking, working, and resting, being able to give that much attention to the older toddler may not be possible and so you decide to entertain them with a tv show or something while you do something else.
- matvp 4y agoAs a parent of an almost 2 year old (tomorrow!), I feel a bit worried of what is yet to come. I notice kids around me (family, kids of friends) ranging 3 to 10+ mostly consume YouTube, TikTok, ... on a daily basis and when they do, they're totally isolated from what happens around them. They get feeded ad after ad, watching teenagers doing odd dances, minecraft video's, ... Rarely something of pedagogical value. Hope I can do better, time will tell. Tips are welcome though.
- scohesc 4y agoI was raised pretty much alone and spent far far too much time on the computer, always online and on the internet other than going to school and "surviving" - was exposed to 4chan at a young age, nobody monitoring what I was doing online, nobody caring for my struggles in school growing up other than "oh you've got great marks, you must be doing well in school!". My parents didn't really pay attention to me growing up other than to serve their own emotional interests which didn't help. I'm 100% sure it's the primary reason that I'm so socially disadvantaged now in my late 20's - and honestly, probably why my late-diagnosis ADHD and its symptoms are as bad as they are now. The depression and anxieties are huge - and I still spend _far, far_ too much time online recreationally playing video games instead of doing actual work advancing my career. Yes, the world is increasingly digital - yes, the world is going to be/already is "a computer in every pocket, a device in every room"... that doesn't mean we can't teach our children moderation. Make sure you know what your kids are watching online. Don't substitute parenting with a tablet because you're tired, you had a bad day at work, etc. etc. - I understand there's a lot of specific instances (single mothers/fathers, both parents working long hours, etc. etc.) that encourage this too and it's sad that society has encouraged these behaviors for so long. A family member of mine allowed her 10 year old to make a TikTok account even though there's a strict age limit of 13 - I shudder to think about the content that the app is filling their easily impressionable mind with at such a young age... YouTube is a video-sharing service designed to serve as many ads as possible into your eyeballs. It's obvious that if you leave a child to their own devices (hahaha) that they're going to get the full, "un-moderated" Youtube Kids experience. Toy ads disguised as videos, commercial lifestyles disguised as "influencers", etc. etc. I'm sure there's a lot of decent content there but it's up to the parent to teach kids moderation, teach kids to get off the screen and get outside, talk to friends in person, etc. etc. There's only so much you can do though with the hours you have in a day. Hopefully society changes and begins to realize that these tools are harmful as much as they are helpful if not used properly.
- franczesko 4y agoHaving a separate app instead of a kids profile in Youtube was one of the poorest design choices ever.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 4y agoIt's a great nanny for adults too. I love getting lost in it whenenever I have time to burn. Audiobooks. Music albums. Weird science channels. Memes. Standup Comedy. Old foreign movies. Podcasts. It's the eighth wonder of the world if you ask me. I'm a happy paying user and have been for years.
- stiltzkin 4y agoI wouldn't trust YouTube as your nanny: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1620505632649650177.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1620505632649650177.html
- darepublic 4y agoDunno why but kids seem to like YouTube > Netflix, Disney, well produced kids shows. Tacky weird amateur YouTube appeals more.
- kderbyma 4y agoI would never trust YouTube with children. It would probably get heavily moderated and I wouldn't second guess blocking it in an instant. it's a source of extremely low quality content, powered by a mostly evil corporation
- BillyTheMage 4y agoIt makes me sick to see all the people who think the answer is to keep their kids away from computers or restrict screen time to a ridiculous degree. That's a real good way to leave your kid ignorant and defenseless when they inevitably escape your prison. Not only that, you're making sure a kid who might have had an interest in programming or something never develops that interest, or if they do they'll resent you for holding them back. I agree you shouldn't plop your kids down in front of YouTube and say "here you go". You need to teach your kids to be safe with computers. Failing to do that is neglect at this point in history. You'd be crazy if you never told your kid not to run out in the road or put their hand on a stove. And you'd be crazy if you didn't teach your kids to use computers the right way. Stop letting your kids be ignorant.
- hjkl0 4y agoYou have to teach your kids how to use YouTube and what they can learn from it. How the YouTube front page works, how YouTube recommends videos, how YouTubers produce their videos. How these things are honed and perfected to attract their attention and never let go. And you have to teach them how it influences them. You have to teach them about addiction and anxiety. You have to teach them about moderation and responsibility. Its not YouTube’s fault if you don’t teach them yourself.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y agoTv helps, but YouTube seems to kill kids'brain. I usually provide them with long (long= 1 hour +) movies if they watch tv and usually the same one (that's the relationship we had with tv). This seems better than youtube, they seems to learn a lot about the movie which means they are engaged. I wish I could tell we don't show them tv at all, but some days we are so tired that the whole family just hangs on the couch watching some good movies If they are not they get bored and change "toy"
- dylanzhangdev 4y agoThis thread is very popular, and some people are constantly looking for ideas for side projects. I think this is a good market demand, big enough and beneficial to society. People struggling with this problem indicate a need for a better solution or product.
- e-clinton 4y agoI’m perplexed that there aren’t any tools to curate “kids” sections in streaming services. It’s seems like such a no-brainer.
- daveslash 4y agoRe >> "Plenty of parents have the same debate in their own minds, or with partners and friends: Is letting kids use screens all right, and if so for how long?" As an anecdote, my mom would only allow me 15 minutes at a time of Tetris on the household GameBoy. My views on kids & screentime is pretty conservative, especially when they're younger, but my mom was down-right draconian!
- einherjae 4y agoAnd your GameBoy wasn’t designed with psychiatrists on the team to improve the addictiveness/retention/click-rate. It’s important to remember that todays screens aren’t the screens of yore, but quite a lot more devious. It’s fairly obvious that any negative impact of that would be larger on impressionable young minds.
- cmsj 4y agoThis is such a good point. Games are like this now too, especially on mobile. It's super sad.
- daveslash 4y agoIt's funny that you bring this up. I think it is a very good point, and it's very accurate. Especially on mobile games and games like farmville, age of empires mobile, etc.... I say it's funny because it's specifically the reason that I can't stand them. I feel like it's always a carrot-and-stick, and the carrot is always moving, uncatchable - but you can get closer to the carrot briefly if you drop more coin in game. I get burned out. Give me SimCity 2000, Age of Empires II, or Quake Arena, and I'll play until I "get my fill", walk away happy, then come back for more later. I still play Sim City 2000 and AoE II semi regularly. It may be an age thing, having gotten into games so long ago.
- shmde 4y agoYeah kind of a similar story. We had our access to PC revoked when we were 10 because we did not switch off our Rollercoaster tycoon 2 session at 9PM.