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Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

theatlantic.com

131–140 of 154 posts

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#131
I wonder if some of these formats might be leveraged for informal science education content?

For instance, there was a play-doh egg surprise with a lego doctor figure with a stethoscope. Imagine instead an egg surprise with a real stethoscope (and maybe the figure and/or say a real egg with an inked on scope). Then show kindergarten kids using stethoscopes (it's a thing). Build associations between heartbeat sounds, wrist and apex palpation, the flashing heart icon of blood pressure machines and fitness apps, ECG, hr, hr vs time graphs, and so on. Include a clip of an N-yard dash and cool down, with with heart sounds, flashing icon, and hr graph. Hr sounds for sleeping person, walking, running or climbing stairs. For resting infant, kid, adult. And for mouse, cat, small dog, big dog, human, horse, whale. It's fun to see dogs and horses anyway, but why not take the opportunity to add heart stuff and hint at scaling laws too?

The videos linked to from the article didn't seem odd choices. They seemed to have rich and fun "learning about the world" content.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#132
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I really wish YouTube offered parental controls on the YouTube app for iPads. I catch my toddler watching all kinds of terrible videos. I think there's some way involving a Google account but it's not obvious.

Apple makes clear youtube app is for 18+, Android has similar req in fine print for youtube app in play store. I would remove youtube and install youtube app for kids.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#133
post #25

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…

YouTube, iPads, TV's, can float around in the homes of other families, and your kids can visit their homes and play on their Xbox or whatever.

But that doesn't mean these things need to be part of your kids home, work, or play routine. Even kids in nice areas around the bay area aren't about to suddenly bring home an iPad or iPhone without their parents notice. Kids will beg, but they will also learn to stop begging; they will learn that their family just does things differently.

I've seen plenty of parents choose NOT to buy their kids a major computing device until junior high age, and prior to then making them go through the inconvenience of typing on their parents computer.

It doesn't screw them up. It doesn't make them socially weird. It doesn't make them technologically aversive later, and it doesn't stunt their enthusiasm for play.

If you want to give your kids unsupervised play, because you need some personal or work time, what's wrong with biking around the city with friends?

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#134
post #84
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I learned fascinating things from Wikipedia, learned to develop, which led to working in tech which I am thankful for. But I also went from reading novels for 12 hours a day to browsing reddit for 12 hours a day, which did a number on my brain. Deeply regret it.

I found that it reduced my concentration and ability to focus.

I found the same thing after I started using Twitter and Facebook. Old school websites as a kid? Eh, didn't hurt my concentration that much.

But modern social media sites are something different entirely, and they've likely given their users a 30 second attention span or worse.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#135
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

5 - 8. I was concerned at first. But there's so many of these on YouTube that have pretty high view counts, that my worry pretty quickly went from "my friend's kids are weird" to "kids are weird".

This kind of reminds me of having a few favourite VHS tapes and watching them over and over as a little kid.

I used to think it was disconcerting, but I also had peers that did the same and turned out alright, so I wonder if it's part of figuring out stimulus/work/gratification/reward/effort as a child and eventually growing into an adult.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#136
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…

Wow. I've seen these on my feed and was sure (until now) that they were just jokes. Or maybe they are, and young kids just react differently.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#137
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with the extremely short shot duration? I noticed that in some movies too. It was incredibly frustrating. Is is some film technique to make me feel what it's like to be OCD? I just assumed the movie was so poorly directed that they were left with stitching together a bunch of crap.

Let's say we have a sixty second shot, where two actors throw ten lines of dialogue back and forth at eachother. Let's say that one out of ten takes on a line is good. It will take far more then ten minutes to film this. The actors may nail line #1 and #2, but flub #3 or #4, or #7 or look at the wrong thing, or the director won't like something about their emotions, or whatnot. You have to do an entire re-take, whene…

I just wanted to say that this is an awesome answer. I'm going to be paying much more attention to shots in the shows I watch now.

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#138

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…

Looks great. As a parent of a 2yo I value this more than at $10/mo and since my kid only uses one tablet I would qualify for free so you probably should increase the prices. Wonder what you think the ideal age is to introduce this?

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon your daughter will learn: it's always DNS

That's right! My other project is something I think is very powerful, but nobody so far seems to be to interested. Throwing it out in case someone wants try it. If you pay attention to malware analysis you will see raw IP addresses and random domains are very common in malware. I think corps should enable their outbound firewalls. Problem now is whitelisting each IP is way too much work. My tests show a C++ DNS proxy…

My son is smart enough to change DNS IPs to google public DNS servers and the most ridiculous thing is that he studied it on the khanacademy site. :)

Re: Algorithm That Makes Preschoolers Obsessed with YouTube

#140
post #128

I'm late to the party, but any advice on shutting down YouTube in the home at the router. I need an on/off button on my phone!

One solution is to use a chromecast device (or similar devices), you can control everything(content, amount of time) from your phone.
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