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YouTube has become the world's nanny

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Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#131

Post by wizofaus »

sandos wrote: post #65
kasperni wrote: post #49

For people cooking alone with a kid. How do you entertain them while cooking without screentime? Kid is 16 months. Too old to lie still, and too young to help out in any capacity without getting injured. Edit: Letting them play with utensils gives me about 2-3 minutes.

What did people do before youtube? Why is it impossible to leave the kid alone in a safe-ish environment? We had an "almost" strict no-screens policy (long car trips I think was excluded) when our kids were under 2 years of age. It was fine, don't even remember it as a problem, even when only one parent was home cooking.

TV/DVDs/VHS tapes? And, well, prior to that women were largely expected to dedicate most of their time to looking after kids. I was a single Dad of a 3yo (long before YouTube) and I can't imagine having done it without having some form of electronic entertainment to keep the kid distracted. I suppose I would've relied on other family or expensive childcare options.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#132

Post by calme_toi »

It is so often I see kids sitting in buggy chairs wearing headphone with a phone.

It always makes me really really sad and I don't know why.

My colleague told me they started with zero screen time for their kids but eventually give up because sometimes it's the only way to have a quite dinner.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#133

Post by TeMPOraL »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #119
shawabawa3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> despite not having a good mechanistic explanation for why YT is OK even at small dosages Do you have an explanation for YT is NOT ok even at small dosages?

Did we miss out on all of the HN articles and studies about how socmed consumption negatively impacts people’s levels of happiness, self-esteem, and ability to focus, and have we no experience of it?

We didn't, we just read and understood it - in particular, just because a site is classified "socmed", doesn't mean any kind of contact with it will instantly materialize those negative impacts you mention. Or that just because a site is classified "vod", it's substantially safer.

YouTube is mostly just a video-on-demand site. The social aspects are immaterial to how kids use the platform.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#134

Post by ChewFarceSkunk »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #41
nmfisher wrote: post #18

As a new(ish) parent, I'm astonished at how readily most parents hand off their kids over to YouTube/tablet/phone. I even saw a stroller the other day with a permanent mount for the phone. I haven't banned YouTube (yet), but I have limited it almost completely due to concerns about the long-term effects of extended use from such an early age. Those concerns will only deepen as my son gets older - there's a lot of goo…

I’m also horrified by the responses of parents here who are lax with YouTube, even to a slight degree. It’s like they feel that they are morally bound to find a middle-ground stance despite not having a good mechanistic explanation for why YT is OK even at small dosages, given how it has already radicalized people and impacted the global political order on the basis of fake news? Why isn’t the concern far more sweepi…

It seems like YT's horde of psychiatrists has tapped into parents' minds as well, so they are programmed into believing they can't downshift in any aspect of their lives and won't sacrifice shit to actually pay attention to their very own children, because: work, money, stress, no time, no energy. Better let YouTube take care of them.

Society is fucked.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#135

Post by theshrike79 »

gambiting wrote: post #15
theshrike79 wrote: post #3

Nope, nope nope. My kid is 10 and still doesn't know a single Youtuber by name and doesn't really watch Youtube. We did try Youtube Kids at one point, but it was just 99% toy ads masquerading as authentic content. Netflix has a pretty good age limiter and well produced TV-shows. Disney+ has Bluey and a ton of other content. AppleTV+ has a few good ones too, but not as much as the two big ones. Paying the few coins fo…

>>My kid is 10 and still doesn't know a single Youtuber by name Authentic curiosity - does your child not go to a normal school? In my experience you can literally detach your home from the internet and live without electricity, but the second your kids go to school they instantly know all the latest fads and videos and what not. To make it to 10 without being at least somewhat familiar with youtube through that expo…

Dunno if the school is a weird outlier, but none of my kid's friends are obsessed with Youtube influencers either.

I haven't banned the kid from Youtube, just didn't specifically direct them there. Except for a few times. I think we looked up sign language tutorials (that was a big deal 3-4 years ago) and some drawing tutorials for watercolours.

I think they see Youtube as a source for information instead of entertainment? At least that's my theory.

Also: I'm not from a native english speaking country, so the amount of content is even more limited. Most of the local YT influencers are 100% insufferable.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#136

Post by cmsj »

einherjae wrote: post #31
daveslash wrote: post #2

Re >> " Plenty of parents have the same debate in their own minds, or with partners and friends: Is letting kids use screens all right, and if so for how long? " As an anecdote, my mom would only allow me 15 minutes at a time of Tetris on the household GameBoy. My views on kids & screentime is pretty conservative, especially when they're younger, but my mom was down-right draconian!

And your GameBoy wasn’t designed with psychiatrists on the team to improve the addictiveness/retention/click-rate. It’s important to remember that todays screens aren’t the screens of yore, but quite a lot more devious. It’s fairly obvious that any negative impact of that would be larger on impressionable young minds.

This is such a good point. Games are like this now too, especially on mobile. It's super sad.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#137

Post by robertlagrant »

alxmng wrote: post #104
robertlagrant wrote: post #100

I physically removed our only television from the lounge to behind some furniture because our eldest (who was 6) was behaving more and more like a drug addict: alternating wheedling, begging, pleading, shouting, to get television. Once I did that, and he saw it really wasn't an option, he changed quite quickly - after around 3 months - and we have it back now, although there's no screen time except weekends (or if so…

But do you watch YouTube or use screens around him? That's my problem with the advice to limit screen time. Why should I be telling my child not to do something that everyone around him is doing?

> But do you watch YouTube

I do sometimes, although nothing he can see.

> Why should I be telling my child not to do something that everyone around him is doing

Me doing something isn't the same as "everyone around him".

If you refactor that to reflect reality, you get "Why should I be telling my child not to do something that I am doing?"

Then my answer is: they're a child. Not an adult. I don't let my son drive, even though I can. I work; he goes to school. I drink alcohol; he doesn't. I'm on social media; he's not. I'm married; he's not. I watch horror movies; he doesn't. Brains fully develop by 25. My son is now 7. He isn't just a smaller version of me. He's a child version of me.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#138

Post by patja »

passwordoops wrote: post #112
alxmng wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What age are you talking about?

9-11 To be clear, we were strict up until the pandemic when we let things slide. Then all the friends were on messenger and if that's the only source of socializing, well ok. We didn't have YT on the tablet, but through ad clicking she discovered it would sometimes open in the browser, then she just figured out how the browser works. I'd say there was close to a year of virtually unfettered access, up to 2 hours a da…

Curious about the use of the word messenger. Do you mean Facebook's Messenger? Isn't that only for age 13 and over?

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#139

Post by blitzar »

878654Tom wrote: post #66
blitzar wrote: post #60

To my grandparents / great grandparents generation at the time (70/80's) TV has become the world's nanny would have generated all the same comments as this. If you watched tv - the idiotbox - for more than 15 minutes your eyes would go square.

That is simply not true, with television you also had the panic of "brain rot" but at least you could still trust public television networks with not showing dubious content. Youtube for kids seems to be a rabbithole place where you end up with "Spiderman kisses Anna", very obvious advertisements or very trippy shows while on public television you had kid shows with educative touch on them (a visit to the forest, chi…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influence_of_Sesame_Street

See the critical reception section for highlights including; Sesame Street also introduced children to a shallow pop culture, undermined American education, and relieved parents of their responsibility of teaching their children how to read.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#140

Post by itsoktocry »

cmsj wrote: post #28
nmfisher wrote: post #18

As a new(ish) parent, I'm astonished at how readily most parents hand off their kids over to YouTube/tablet/phone. I even saw a stroller the other day with a permanent mount for the phone. I haven't banned YouTube (yet), but I have limited it almost completely due to concerns about the long-term effects of extended use from such an early age. Those concerns will only deepen as my son gets older - there's a lot of goo…

I tried YouTube Kids a few years ago, the experience was not great - content isn't pre-screened, so weird stuff can slip through the cracks. It's also obviously not being maintained with a sincere attempt to solve the problems that parents actually have - for example, as your kid gets older and they get a google account, they can't sign in to YouTube Kids, you have to sign in with an Adult account, but then that acco…

>content isn't pre-screened, so weird stuff can slip through the cracks

You can individually add channels with acceptable content, so unless you're adding sketchy channels, nothing is going to slip through.

>as your kid gets older and they get a google account, they can't sign in to YouTube Kids

I feel like by the time a child needs their own Google account they have moved beyond YouTube Kids, no?

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