YouTube has become the world's nanny

Can you explain how you are sure that the concern is limited to the age range that you specified? You make it sound like there’s just one way that kids can grow. It’s completely possible for kids to gain access to bad internet stuff at a far younger age and they could carry it with them for a long time.

Is the kid not capable of quietly playing with their toys?

Not making any judgement but I truly think that parenting is a two-person job.

Two of my sisters have in total 3 kids (4 to 6 years old) and all three of them need to watch youtube videos while eating.

Just few days back, my sister had a 'gathering' to announce her 2nd child (making it total 4 kids combined) and the 3rd kid needed to watch few youtube videos (usually they are of other kids playing or doing some stuff) to eat his dinner, which I found quite odd.

This thing is not only related to my sisters kids but for every new kid born in recent years, they will not eat 'peacefully' without youtube.

Also, TV cannot be used, it needs to be youtube where real kids are playing.

Edit:- Found the channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCmSidxfQmY

Part of reason I 'think' is that these new kids born were not allowed to visit outside, leave home, make friends with neighbours kids, visit other families during Corona crisis and lockdown and they sub-consciously got attached to watching other kids doing fun things on youtube.

Someone should look into this as they are not watching Peppa Pig on youtube (which is also a kids show with characters as kids) but other human kids playing.

So it's great as an educational tool—my daughter is not yet two and surprised both me and my wife this way: when we whipped out a pack of flashcards we had never shown her, she already knew almost all of the shapes and most of the animals, can do the alphabet in random-access order, and was even about 50/50 on what the obverse sides of the alphabet cards depicted, only failing to associate the starting sound of the word with the letter (so e.g. she guessed Frog for the image on the back of the T card, when it was a turtle).

Then there are the disturbing parts. The ad starts “this is a word...” and I skip it but she chimes in to complete it, “smore denna word” from whenever I haven't been able to skip it... and I have to say “no it's not, they're lying to you, it's not even a word.” Somehow AirBnB’s marketing idea is to imprint deep upon the brains of impressionable children? I get the ads where they basically try to interrupt her YouTube channel with some other show about Barbie or Peppa Pig, they're trying to get the baby hooked on a new YouTube channel so that they can get in on this huge industry. But then there's a lot that are just questionably targeted, “Toddlers: I need to tell you all that when I needed to start a business and it needed a website, I turned straight to whatever-the-fuck.com and got it set up in ten minutes!”

The ads aren't the only part that I find questionable of course. There are real questions about her becoming a consumer and us not really being present for a playtime when we are monitoring her watching those programs. Take away the TV and she loves to draw on any piece of paper you give her, she craves walking outdoors and even demands to climb the steep steps up to home (assisted of course), loves to be upside down or piggyback. One of her first words was “hewpfull!” and she demands to help put cans/bottles in the recycling and close doors for us and turn out her own light at bedtime.

Opportunity costs, they’ll get you every time.

As a parent, screen time vs no screen time is a fine line that we have to continually renegotiate.

Screens can be great, there is so much good information out there that can enrich our lives. I wouldn't go the "no screens ever" route because that's just being a luddite, robbing them of the change to experience, and acquire expertise in, the digital world that they will be interacting with for the rest of their lives.

However, I am not letting my kid roam the internet, there be dragons. In particular YouTube's recommendation algorithm, even in their YouTube kids app, seems to default to serving up horrible brain melting crap instead of anything pedagogical. I am against kids content that is designed solely to entrance and keep them sitting still, it's the equivalent of digital candy floss. For example, the whole "surprise egg" trend, which basically is a video version of the lootbox / Deal Or No Deal, mechanic, is some of the most popular and recommended videos to children on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=surpris...

All three of the frist vids we were served by YouTube kids were surprise egg videos. Hard uninstall.

Curating content and setting limits on screen time is your job as a parent in this era. We cannot outsource this responsibility to companies and AIs because there is simply no way an algorithm find the stuff that is just right for your child.