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We used YouTube for a few months with our first kid but we stopped again because you quickly end up in a rabbit hole where it mostly recommends videos that look

We used YouTube for a few months with our first kid but we stopped again because you quickly end up in a rabbit hole where it mostly recommends videos that look weirdly auto-generated, are devoid of any meaningful content and have an uncanny pacifying effect on children - exactly like the surprise egg videos you linked to. We were the ones controlling the app, but the kid quickly learns to recognize the bright thumbnails and requests them. We ended up making up a story about YouTube being broken, and we are still very happy with that choice. I really don't think watching this kind of brain-melting content is healthy for anyone. I think we all know the feeling we get when we have binged a show for too long, that bored and slightly depressed feeling where you want to stop, but you keep going for a little while longer than you should simply because you crave the continued stimulation. I get that feeling almost instantly when watching one of these videos, and I am truly worried about the mental state of kids who watch this stuff for hours every day.

kibwen 4y ago
> I really don't think watching this kind of brain-melting content is healthy for anyone. I spent two hours yesterday transfixed by the AI-generated Infinite Seinfeld stream. Afterward I felt the mental equivalent of the feeling you get after eating an entire tray of cookies in a single sitting. This algorithmic crap is brain poison.
- touisteur 4y ago
  I'm guessing the meta thing we're going to have to become robust to (after 'the system is trying to sell you things you don't want/need' and 'the system is trying to make you feel bad about yourself', 'the system is trying to make you believe that you are more clever than everyone for discovering a cabal', 'the system is trying to get you angry for engagement', 'the system is trying to have you invest in a thing you'll have to pay exponentially to keep enjoying at all') is going to be 'the system is trying to engage you in getting you to watch predictable things'. So many horrible human tech we're teaching our kids to harden against, how powerless is our society that this constant violence is accepted.

kibwen 4y ago

> I really don't think watching this kind of brain-melting content is healthy for anyone. I spent two hours yesterday transfixed by the AI-generated Infinite Seinfeld stream. Afterward I felt the mental equivalent of the feeling you get after eating an entire tray of cookies in a single sitting. This algorithmic crap is brain poison.

touisteur 4y ago
I'm guessing the meta thing we're going to have to become robust to (after 'the system is trying to sell you things you don't want/need' and 'the system is trying to make you feel bad about yourself', 'the system is trying to make you believe that you are more clever than everyone for discovering a cabal', 'the system is trying to get you angry for engagement', 'the system is trying to have you invest in a thing you'll have to pay exponentially to keep enjoying at all') is going to be 'the system is trying to engage you in getting you to watch predictable things'. So many horrible human tech we're teaching our kids to harden against, how powerless is our society that this constant violence is accepted.