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YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

bbc.com

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Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#81

Post by drewcon »

IAmWorried wrote: post #50
drewcon wrote: post #21

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…

Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so creepy about this? It's a bunch of colors, and cars being dipped into the colors, with dumb music and sfx. Is it really so harmful? Honestly curious as I don't have kids of my own, so not sure.

I thought the same thing when we initially put them on. I thought "hey they're a bit weird, but this is the internet! What isn't weird here!?!?"

But if you put them on continuously in front of a young kid (or at least my kid) and you can almost see their gray matter being systematically obliterated.

I think its childhood equivalent of mindless doomscrolling.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#82

Post by darkwater »

makomk wrote: post #42

One unintended consequence of the FTC settlement mentioned in the article is that almost no-one wants to create high quality kid-friendly content anymore, because doing so forces them to accept huge restrictions on how everyone interacts with it - now no-one can add those videos to playlists or leave comments on them, by FTC decree, even if they're adults on the main version of YouTube. So anyone producing content th…

I struggle to understand how personal playlists need a user to work. And comments... well, YT Kids audience is not the most commenting one...

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#83

Post by james-skemp »

drewcon wrote: post #21

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…

Whew. I was afraid it was going to link to Super Simple Songs.

For what it's worth, we found https://www.youtube.com/user/SuperSimpleSongs via the Khan Academy Kids app. They have select videos (from what we've seen) from this particular creator that they break up into the app and make responsive.

So for example they may play a bit of 'Do you know the muffin man,' then pause it and ask the child to tap on the ___. Or tap and count the ___.

Given how he's been developing, and that we'll break into random songs that we learned from the series, I've no complaints with a few channels.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#84

Post by temp8964 »

drewcon wrote: post #21

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…

Yes. We have noticed these too. And there were videos of silly kids doing silly things (like pretend fighting / chasing). And characters just walking inside video games (like Minecraft). Totally pointless and meaningless videos. Constantly and automatically play one after another.

A single video would appear harmless. But hundreds (maybe thousands) of these? Horrible.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#85

Post by mixmastamyk »

IAmWorried wrote: post #50
drewcon wrote: post #21

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…

Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so creepy about this? It's a bunch of colors, and cars being dipped into the colors, with dumb music and sfx. Is it really so harmful? Honestly curious as I don't have kids of my own, so not sure.

Not sure what others feel, but the video feels particularly lifeless to me. Combined with the effects mentioned by the grandparent post. Mentioned it seemed ok for a while.

I don't allow my kid to use youtube at all so it is preaching to the choir here, pinch of salt, etc.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#86

Post by ModernMech »

I don't see the issue. Our entire society is set up on the premise that American citizens need to consume. My grocery store has little child-sized shopping carts that kids can push around to learn the ropes of consumerism. There's even a little flag on it that says "Customer in training". During the early days of a global pandemic our own government was referring to American citizens as "Consumers" as they communicated information about the disease [1]. That's how they see us. That's all we're good for.

Our entire economy is based on unlimited consumption. People are hired to produce widgets for integration into gadgets that will be consumed. If we suddenly decide that we've had enough gadgets, what happens to the supply chain of gadget and widget producers? There can never be enough gadgets or everything comes crashing down. Not only can there never be enough, there always has to be more gadgets produced compared to the year before, or else the markets in which people have bet their futures become unglued.

There's no concept of fulfillment. There's a vast media empire in place whose sole purpose is to tell us we don't have enough, and that if we don't consume more we will be overtaken by emptiness. Even the HN front page of all places is guilty of pushing this message. Best to instill consumerist ideology in children as early as possible, so they don't start thinking that maybe they don't need the newest, slickest, shiniest gadgets. That maybe there is life and happiness outside of consumption. These are literally society destroying thoughts that must be suppressed at all cost. Western civilization depends on it.

[1]: https://external-preview.redd.it/cloQPFfyR61-VvSdfol941t-AuY...

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#87

Post by Someone1234 »

trentnix wrote: post #67

sigh Government nanny pearl-clutching over children's entertainment is a time-honored tradition. They said comic books rotted kids brains in the 50s. They said He-Man was too violent in the 80s. They said video games were training killers in the 90s. They said animated shows had too many advertisements, introduced regulations to limit how much time could be allocated to commercials for animated shows, and ultimately…

That's all well and good, but YouTube Kids lacks the TOOLS that parents need to help protect their children from the junk.

The problem is that there's no money to be made from curation and high costs in doing so, therefore Google/YouTube simply does the bare minimum to avoid critique.

You can ban individual videos and even channels, but this "solution" scales poorly with near infinite videos/channels, much of it unsuitable for your parenting goals.

I agree that there is some fantastic content on the platform, but it is like a 5:1 thing between trash:quality. That's a problem.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#88

Post by WillyF »

The YouTube Kids AppleTV app is also horrible. It freezes and needs to be restarted constantly immediately after opening.

But even worse is that there is no way to quickly rewind or fast forward. You can only use the skip 10 seconds buttons. So if my son watches half of a show and wants to watch it again a week later, the show starts where he left off. I end up having to click the remote about 200 times to get back to the start. I upgraded to get rid of ads, which has made the experience much better, but the UI is really infuriating.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#89

Post by wffurr »

IAmWorried wrote: post #50
drewcon wrote: post #21

Can confirm. There is a strain of video (below) on there that is just like perceptual candy to kids. And there are LOADS of these videos in slightly different versions. My own anecdote: Our 2 year old found these videos (3 years ago): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7IsNFDtG4U&list=PLHZrFxrJbt... At first we were like "seems fine, colors and shapes...keeps him engaged". After a month or two he could just stare slack…

Am I the only one who doesn't see what's so creepy about this? It's a bunch of colors, and cars being dipped into the colors, with dumb music and sfx. Is it really so harmful? Honestly curious as I don't have kids of my own, so not sure.

There's nothing on the surface that seems bad, but it's weirdly creepy and unsettling, not to mention low production values. Doubly so when you see a two year old completely zoned out while watching it - staring, hardly breathing, insensate to the rest of the world.

Re: YouTube Kids a “vapid wasteland” say US lawmakers

#90

Post by jonahhorowitz »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #31

What's so stupid is trying to avoid having humans in the loop. Paying an educator to find 100 hours of decent content per age level couldn't cost much. It isn't youtube, it doesn't have to be endless. But it needs to be good and appropriate. Human curation is the right thing to do.

What you're describing is Netflix.
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