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YouTube has become the world's nanny

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Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#161
post #55

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…

In our family we have the older kids read aloud during dinner while the younger ones eat (0-11 age range).

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#162

YouTube is actively harmful to children, it’s full of crap content, endless ads and the algorithm takes you to the darkest pits in no time at all. You like paw patrol? How about some videos of the pups killing each other? And kids love candy (brain candy) even if it is of no nutritional value - at this age they don’t know better. We found that no amount of supervision or curation by adults keeps the child completely…

There is good educational stuff on Youtube, but you need to actively look for it in the sea of shit.

These two are in my favourites:

https://www.youtube.com/@dianxixiaoge https://www.youtube.com/@cnliziqi

Liziqi had some issues with her production company and stopped doing new videos, and her stuff was WAY too cutesy to be real.

Dianxi is more "authentic", but still relaxing to watch.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#163

Putting aside the morality of it, I wish we could study a case where twins are raised differently: 1. one where youtube (or any form of media under the sun) is part of daily life, 2. and another where youtube (and any alternative image/video/audio/social media) is completely removed. Really what I'm asking for is the 21st century version of the identical twin study: https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/identical-twins-rai…

Okay, but it shouldn't be N=1, otherwise it's just anecdotal.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#164
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

All apps are 13+, it's a law thing. If companies go under that, they face intense scrutiny. Epic lost a case because of that already ($200M+ fine & years of supervision), Rovio is in hot water too.

Same issue with WhatsApp for example, but it's pretty much a requirement to have any social life after first grade over here. Also there is no way for anyone except a parent to report an underage WA user, so there are no repercussions.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#165
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like a parent that is totally disconnected from the reality of their child than a particularly deceptive child.

FWIW, if my memory is in any way accurate, 10 y.o. is about the age I stopped discussing a class of topics with my parent, after one too many times of me wanting to share something important and feeling ignored. My parents lost a window into a chunk of my life then, and honestly, never really regained to this day. It sounds stupid even to me now, but it's really not easy to fix such things at the age of 30+. Those em…

I also kinda feel like that something like that might be normal part of growing up. I dont mean the deep emotional wound you talk about, but the fact that the kid has some own internal life the parent does not have access to. As in, even absent emotional wounds, a kid not reporting every thing schoolmates do, a kid having fantasies and interests the kid keeps for itself might just be part of growing up into adult.

It is not being deceptive on the side of the kids. That framing implies adult are entitled to complete overbearing control and kid is not entitled to have private thoughts. It might be parent being untrustworthy or checked out or oblivious, but if not combined with emotional wounds it might be the kid becoming own person.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#166
post #38
post #23

If I have to sum up everything about kid related entertainment I have read on here, it would be: - Games of the kind we have played or we like to play now are good. - The new markets kind of games are totally worst thing ever and steal money. - Arcades and collectible card games we used to spend all our money into were totally different thing. - The kiddy shows we grew up with were best thing ever. Nothing beats them…

The most unbelievable thing about this site is to me the inability of users to recognize their language and aversion to, well, everything, is the same carbon copied rhetoric every generation has used to deride the technological Boogeyman of the day.

I take your point, but isn’t it possible that every generation was right because they feared that one day we’d go too far and weren’t sure if we were at that point yet?

And one day, we may go too far. We might have already.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kids watch a bit of YT kids. I used to be dead against it. Two things happened: - One, my attention and energy is in fact finite. Perhaps I could work less, earn less, have more energy to give to them, but I just can't. - There is a lot of good stuff there, and I see positive aspects of it on my kids. They learn songs. One of my daughters knew the alphabet by the age of 2, the other could count to 20. The oldest o…

But why is YT necessary? Couldn’t you have given your kids access to a more curated and education-dedicated video platform instead? Heck, even Disney+ sounds better here.

"Necessary" is a strong word. It's acceptable IMO, and my kids like it. If you want some more reasons:

- I strongly feel my children have agency, within reason. They like it, more than Disney+, and it's not a strong detractor.

- Frankly, most of the YT stuff they watch is, really, more appropriate. Bite-sized sciency or crafty things, with a silly song. Disney+ stuff I could find myself was genuinely either a bit boring, or a bit naff, or for older children. [EDIT] Timeless classics like Lion King are often too scary for them, and there's plenty of inappropriate stuff there too, just due to the passage of time. Let's just say, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves hasn't aged well.

- There is a much wider selection. My younger daughter is fascinated by aeroplanes. She watches video after video of planes taking off and landing, helicopters hovering and so on. Where do I find it on Disney+?

- Sometimes I see things I don't like on YT, it's a one-click ban for the creator. I have never seen anything wildly inappropriate. It's maybe an issue if your kids are watching it for hours on end, not so much if it's 20 mins after dinner, and I'm in the room.

I was talking to my mum about this, who remembers the same laments about letting children listen to the radio (mindless entertainment, no parental control), and her mum remembers the same thing about children being allowed to read their own colorful children's books, as opposed to adults reading a boring small-print book. When my younger cousins were growing up, there was family lament that they meet up with friends and play video games - yet they didn't grow up to be antisocial psychos. IMO we tend to over-demonise the new.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#168
I think its quite immoral to advertise to children given many forms of advertisement are manipulative. That this now happens globally en-masse is a failure of the species.

It's a shame because I would love to get into this industry given my skill set is a perfect fit and entertaining children is fun and rewarding, but that its driven by advertising makes the notion abhorrent.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#169

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.…

Time spent reading = 2x amount received in screen time works for us. Books (comic books count) have no screen time, neither have any kinds of crafts or other interactive things.

Games are more OK in my mind than just passively staring at someone open surprise eggs on Youtube or watching a "let's play" of some game or a "influencer reacts to X" crapfest.

Thus we have a separate more generous screen time set for games and another for passive video watching. Now my kid is playing Pokemon Violet/Scarlet with their friend using a WhatsApp video call for communication, all good in my book. I showed them PokedDB and they spend time reading stuff about Pokemon in there while gaming :)

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#170
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's a version for kids (0). Contact approvals go through the parents, there's a weekly report so you see who they spoke with, settings to prevent link sharing, curated GIFs (but that's as curated as YT Kids), etc. It's the only reason I signed into FB in the past decade.

Obviously they can just set up their own fake FB account and lie about their age (which frankly I already told her to never sign up to anything with any real information) but the rest of their friends need to as well for it to be of any use. At this age, we're not there yet

(0) https://messengerkids.com/

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