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Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

theatlantic.com

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Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#111

Post by gregmac »

Raphmedia wrote: post #13
option wrote: post #2

Kids aged 2 and 3 should watch any content together with their parent. Or at the very least, the content that parent watched and approved before. No 2 or 3 year old should be mindlessly browsing Youtube

Have a look at Youtube Kids ( https://kids.youtube.com/ )

This is still full of "toy porn" -- unboxing toys, opening eggs to see what's inside, or just an adult(ish) person playing with toys acting out some scene. While it's not "disturbing" (so far as I've seen) it's mindless and still an utter waste of time to watch.

You can block channels, but there are so many of them that it's a losing battle. I would really rather just whitelist some specific channels, but I haven't yet found a way to do that.

I want to encourage my 2yo to be able to use technology like the tablet (and in fact, it's frightening how good she is at figuring it out) but I also don't want her watching this garbage. If she picks one of these and I turn it off, she gets annoyed at me and doesn't understand. I'd rather be able to let her pick her own show without worrying about exactly what it is, by having things like PBS, Sesame Street, TVO, etc pre-approved.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#112

Post by cjf101 »

Have you seen the 2hour+ looping video phenomenon? My friends children introduced me to this. Their favourite videos are extended looping videos of the same 1-minute content. Songs, or funny moments, whatever. Their favourite YouTube activity is to see the same thing over and over and over for hours. They react nearly the same way to the same thing for the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it, but their recommender feed was full of them. I guess the algorithm works.

The article hints at this, but doesn't really point it out, when they talk about children living to see the same kind of thing repeatedly, to try and figure it out.

I'd be really curious to see if this actually helps the learning brain, or hijacks it, preventing deeper understanding through varied examples.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#113

Post by Raphmedia »

gregmac wrote: post #111
Raphmedia wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a look at Youtube Kids ( https://kids.youtube.com/ )

This is still full of "toy porn" -- unboxing toys, opening eggs to see what's inside, or just an adult(ish) person playing with toys acting out some scene. While it's not "disturbing" (so far as I've seen) it's mindless and still an utter waste of time to watch. You can block channels, but there are so many of them that it's a losing battle. I would really rather just whitelist some specific channels, but I haven't y…

I don't know what to tell you about that part.

One of the channels I watch the most is Ashens. It's a British man playing with toys / retro goodies (and loosely reviewing them) on a brown couch and the videos last up to 30 minutes.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#114

Post by wcummings »

cjf101 wrote: post #112

Have you seen the 2hour+ looping video phenomenon? My friends children introduced me to this. Their favourite videos are extended looping videos of the same 1-minute content. Songs, or funny moments, whatever. Their favourite YouTube activity is to see the same thing over and over and over for hours. They react nearly the same way to the same thing for the whole time. I'd never seen anything like it, but their recomm…

Jeez, that is kinda concerning, how old are your friends kids?

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#115

Post by utefan001 »

cjf101 wrote: post #110
utefan001 wrote: post #85

This is how my 11 year old daughter uses YouTube now... After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. In order to fix that she has to do 5 Khan problems or read thoery.com, Duolingo, prodigy math, code monkey, splash math, Xtra math, or typing club. It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube, etc. Best result so far is she now understands how…

This is brilliant. DNS + API is a really smart way to build this. If you haven't done it already, it would be pretty straightforward to post a notification to the child's device (via a companion app on selected platforms) as an additional cue to let them know that they'd used up their time. I'm halfway tempted to set this up for _myself_. You're absolutely right that 30 minutes is gone in instant when you start in on…

We plan to add GitHub progress tracking just for fun. Last year we had full PITM, parent in the middle support, instant YouTube video notification, search history, but 2 problems, I worried parent would login to bank on child's device, exposing creds to server and also, kids use crazy amount of gigs per day. Traffic volume to cloud http proxy was massive during tests.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#116

Post by scandox »

I have a 5 year old and a two year old and I've absolutely banned unwrapping videos. They are like heroin.

With cartoons they'd watch and be disappointed if we ended them. With this more addictive content my older kid would become aggressive and highly agitated if we stopped them.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#117

Post by Retric »

watwut wrote: post #108
Retric wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comic code was a reaction to early and very gritty comics, US comics are still very tame by comparison.

The tame US comic still does not pass all 41 points of 1954 comic code which was fully endorsed. Nor half "Disnified" cartoons and stories for little children. It is pretty much impossible to defend comic code as written, even ignoring the argument that adults should be able to read horror stories (including those grittier then Game of Thrones) if they like them. Comic code was simply a reaction of people unable to s…

I am not defending comic code, just stating it was far from the default.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#118

Post by swiley »

bdamm wrote: post #25
thatswrong0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed this myself watching my friends young cousin browse Youtube.. his feed was half clickbait 20-something white guys yelling at you to subscribe Minecraft videos, half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article. If I ever have kids, there's no way in hell I'm letting them run free with an iPad or iPhone. I know it's the "easy way…

You may make a different choice after years of being unable to do anything but give 100% of your attention to the child. Someone needs to cook & clean, or go to work, after all. In the "old days" you'd just cut your kid loose into the environment. Well, these days, TV and iPads are part of the environment, and YouTube along with it. I'm not saying you wouldn't make boundaries. Boundaries are important. But that may a…

That's so sad, when I was first aloud to "roam free" on the web at 12 was when I taught myself basic and pascal.

I used it differently back then too. I opened a browser with what I wanted in mind, I found it, then I closed the browser and did something else. There was never this mindless wandering or idle talking, just fetching pdfs and saving html tutorials and downloading compilers. Maybe I've romanticized it though...

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#119

Post by rapt »

utefan001 wrote: post #85

This is how my 11 year old daughter uses YouTube now... After 30 min, DNS no longer works for entertainment sites. In order to fix that she has to do 5 Khan problems or read thoery.com, Duolingo, prodigy math, code monkey, splash math, Xtra math, or typing club. It takes her 5 to 7 mins to earn points. My server detects points and re enables DNS replies for YouTube, etc. Best result so far is she now understands how…

This is great. Don't have kids, so I'm going to use it on myself.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#120

Post by kpil »

thatswrong0 wrote: post #20
corysama wrote: post #16

In the past couple of years there has been a huge uptick in YT content targeting very young children. The feedback loop is so tight that many of the creators have converged on designing some of the most visceral (and disturbing) material that appeals to kids at a reptilian level. Think about how genuinely weird little kids are. Sometimes they do stuff that would be scary if it wasn't just a minute of innocent pretend…

I noticed this myself watching my friends young cousin browse Youtube.. his feed was half clickbait 20-something white guys yelling at you to subscribe Minecraft videos, half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article. If I ever have kids, there's no way in hell I'm letting them run free with an iPad or iPhone. I know it's the "easy way…

Here's an anecdote: My five year old daughter got a new classmate in kindergarten that didn't speak our language but knew a little English.

In some way my daughter must have learned just enough words and sentences to be able to communicate more or less right away. The teachers found this fascinating and asked us if we were teaching her or even talking English at home - which we don't. In fact we had no idea what they were talking about.

Anyway, she seems to understand quite much. I have absolutely no idea where this comes from - the only thing I can think of is that it's because of YouTube.

Not that she spends hours and hours, but since she more or less never watches TV I haven't been bothered that much if she get stuck in front of a tablet for a while.

That being said, I try to be aware of what she's watching because there is some weird stuff out there although I don't exactly think that Spidey kissing is harmful.

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