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How do you describe the dangers of the Internet without making it scary, or sounding dramatic?
How do you respond to "but dad, all my classmates have their phones unlimited and unsupervised"?
For context, what is the approximate age category of your child?
There's a billion articles written about all of it, but I am really interested to hear the crowd here.
The only thing I have to say about this right now is that it is shocking to see how quickly and rabidly he becomes absorbed and obsessed with playing the game.
YouTube (and YouTube Kids etc.) is down-right creepy when kids get hold of it.
The kids will watch things like Netflix or Amazon Prime for a bit, get bored, and do something else. They'll play stuff like Minecraft for a bit and move on too. But put them in front of YouTube and they will sit there all day watching banal, repetitive, shockingly obnoxious, and sometimes creepy and disturbing content. Sometimes the younger ones will literally urinate on themselves because they are so transfixed by YouTube.
What's even spookier is that the same content on normal streaming networks does not have the same effect. There's a young kids show called Blippi that they watched on YouTube before we banned it. They'd watch it all day on YouTube. Then after our ban it showed upon Amazon Prime. They found it there and will watch it... occasionally... for a bit.
There is something about YouTube's design and algorithm that's a perfect Skinner box for humans, and it works disturbingly well for children.
P.S. the adult behavior often involves a powerful "rabbit hole" effect where you watch one political or ideological video and you get profiled and served tons more like it. Combined with the Skinner box effect it has and it's like some weird dystopia where you get Clockwork Orange style brainwashing but get to pick what you're brainwashed with. Reminds me of a skit Monty Python would have done:
"Hello sir, I'm here for the brainwashing. Can I see a menu?"
"Certainly, sir! Today's we have a half off special on Leninism and UFO abductee cults..."
"Do you have holocaust denial?"
"Hmm... I think we may be out of that one. Would you like some tankie gulag denial instead?"
I have a 2.5 year old who we occasionally let play an ABC/123 game on an iPad or phone with Guided Access mode on, so he can't access anything else. Usually 30 minutes max or longer in the car. The only thing I have to say about this right now is that it is shocking to see how quickly and rabidly he becomes absorbed and obsessed with playing the game.
Limited restrictions except for mandatory grayscale display - it's much harder to get addicted to a black-and-white screen than a rainbow slot machine.
When our oldest was ~3, he had been potty trained for awhile. We were on vacation and he was on the iPad we had brought for the plane. He was so engrossed in the game that he didn't even notice he was peeing there in the living room. That incident really firmed up our Minimal Screen Time resolve.
Kids are going to spend their whole lives on screens, just like all of us do. IMO there's no reason to get that started early if you can help it.
The only one we have so far is that we blocked YouTube at the router level. YouTube (and YouTube Kids etc.) is down-right creepy when kids get hold of it. The kids will watch things like Netflix or Amazon Prime for a bit, get bored, and do something else. They'll play stuff like Minecraft for a bit and move on too. But put them in front of YouTube and they will sit there all day watching banal, repetitive, shockingly…
Youtube is 100% banned.