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YouTube has become the world's nanny

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Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#321

Post by yamtaddle »

phatfish wrote: post #276
furyg3 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curation is key and there need to be better tools. I strongly limit my kid's screen time, and was pleasantly surprised by the PBS kids video app (and to some extent the games app). I felt very comfortable leaving her alone with that at the designated screen times, as most programs had at least some educational component... or at least had some generic but positive moral lessons. And (key!) she gets personal choice in…

Torrent the shows you want her to see and setup Jellyfin server. I run one on a Xeon SOC from 2016, but i would be surprised if a Raspberry Pi 4 couldn't handle the transcoding. Install Jellyfin app on a tablet, you just built a curated version of Netflix.

You really do have to do this if you want your kids to be able to pick what they're watching without you right there all the time. If only all these video services would just let parents add content to allow-lists for kids' accounts. But no. It's literally all we need, but they won't do it.

[EDIT] Incidentally, Jellyfin doesn't have an allow-list, either. You have to put kids' content in a separate library. They have block lists based on tags, but not a more-useful allow-list. It's been requested and I've thought about doing it—I've looked at the code, looks pretty easy—but, LOL, I have kids! Which I expect is why all the other kid-havers requesting the feature haven't gotten around to it, either.

[EDIT AGAIN] The reason the separate-library solution kinda sucks is it fragments your content, so if you're browsing based on library you have to think "wait, did I decide this was OK for the kids' library?" and it doesn't de-dupe so if you put content in both (say, with hard links to avoid wasting disk space) they'll show up twice on accounts that can access both libraries, plus it means shelling in to move files around to change what's available, plus it's a huge PITA if you want multiple kids' accounts with different content (tags are easy—older kids gets all the kid tags as allowed, younger kids get a smaller set of kid-tags allowed). I'd also personally really like to be able to not display all my kid-friendly content to them all the time (too much choice, same as adults experience on streaming services) and change it up periodically (this also lets me push better things on them that they might not pick from a list of 100 but might pick from a list of 10) which makes the separate-library especially painful, since it means file-management actions every single time I want to change up the kids' library, rather than just some quick tag-shuffling on the Web UI, which I can just do from my phone in a pinch.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#322

Post by scld »

Loughla wrote: post #270
scld wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as educational screentime goes, my child has learned addition, subtraction, and multiplication purely from Number Blocks. To the point where we have to do supplemental learning because the fellow kindergarteners are just learning numbers and letters.

I don't think this is the own you think it might be. Our oldest child's kindergarten class (at a very rural, poor school) was doing multiplication and division within the first month, because they all attended a pre-k that encouraged the use of educational games, like Prodigy for math. Like everything, It's what is on the screen and how the child is using it and how involved the parents can be. Number blocks are the…

What part is supposed to be an own? I think number blocks is a fantastic program given the alternatives. Makes math fun for the kids.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#323

Post by TeMPOraL »

alexvoda wrote: post #249
bbor wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that our current algorithms can absolutely find the right stuff for your child, its just not in their financial interest to do so. Sad stuff from capitalism, as always.

There is absolutely no technical reason this problem could not be solved. It is not a technical issue. It is a human issue. Just like most issues of modern society.

Right. I.e. it's a hard problem. Technical problems are the easy ones.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#324

Post by rhino369 »

furyg3 wrote: post #259
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #59

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.…

Curation is key and there need to be better tools. I strongly limit my kid's screen time, and was pleasantly surprised by the PBS kids video app (and to some extent the games app). I felt very comfortable leaving her alone with that at the designated screen times, as most programs had at least some educational component... or at least had some generic but positive moral lessons. And (key!) she gets personal choice in…

I use Plex and just only input shows I want my kids to watch. It's more work, but allows me to have a garden. It's probably not Kosher legally for me to be pirating shows, but I'm only doing shows that I have access to via Netflix, Amazon, HBO etc. So morally, I feel I'm justified.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#325

Post by aantix »

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…

YT, like the real world has the same malicious components. Newspaper, TV, dipshit relatives.

If there's a questionable video being watched, you ask questions, walk them through it, ask them their thoughts "does this seem to make logical sense?", and guide them through it.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#326

Post by SamBam »

kibwen wrote: post #266
alexvoda wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think that treating the problem as screen time is the wrong approach. It is too low resolution. What happens on the screen matters. Many parents end up using screen time as a very blunt tool because we simply lack better tools. But curating content as a family is close to unfeasible because it goes against sponsored algorithmic curation to which others are still exposed and once a kid is socialized they face…

> And now you have become an antagonist. A rule maker to be subverted. Good, then you can teach them to subvert you productively. Keep the tablet locked down, but put an unlocked Linux machine in the house and tell them they can watch whatever they want in Firefox. Once they've done that, make them launch Firefox from the command line. Once that's mastered, make them connect to the wifi manually. Then make them start…

> [Fifth grade classmate] Did you watch the new Wednesday episode yesterday?

> [My kid] I could only catch the last half hour, it took a little longer than I thought to solder all the components on the TV's motherboard before I could turn it on again. The real issue is getting the forge hot enough to heat up the screwdriver I use as a soldering iron...

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#327

Post by aantix »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #147

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…

My kids watch Paw Patrol all of the time on YT.

We have not encountered the type of content you outline, at all.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#328

Post by patja »

passwordoops wrote: post #170
patja wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thanks, this is new since my kids were under 13.

I understand why parents let their children lie in order to avoid social exclusion. Kids can be very cliquey and being excluded hurts.

I counseled my children that it is immoral to misrepresent yourself to someone in order to get them to give you something they otherwise would not (or are prohibited by law from doing so). I still remember my (now 24 year old) daughter gleefully signing up for Facebook on the morning of her 13th birthday.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#329

Post by wilsonnb3 »

ok123456 wrote: post #318
somenameforme wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's one huge difference. TV gets boring, fast. The only time it would remain remotely entertaining was Saturday morning. And even that would get boring relatively quickly. And so you end up turning to other things to entertain yourself, or just be bored. Both of which are probably much better for one's development. YouTube can probably provide entertainment to a child for an arbitrary length of time, on d…

TV may seem boring compared for those of us who have grown accustomed to consuming video over the internet, but a lot of older people just leave their television on all day. Maybe they're not glued to it the whole time, but it it's a constant din. I guess they're hoping something worthwhile may come on and they'll get a squirt of dopamine.

> Maybe they're not glued to it the whole time, but it it's a constant din. I guess they're hoping something worthwhile may come on and they'll get a squirt of dopamine.

Some people just like background noise.

Re: YouTube has become the world's nanny

#330

Post by politician »

alexvoda wrote: post #237
HlessClaudesman wrote: post #59

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.…

I still think that treating the problem as screen time is the wrong approach. It is too low resolution. What happens on the screen matters. Many parents end up using screen time as a very blunt tool because we simply lack better tools. But curating content as a family is close to unfeasible because it goes against sponsored algorithmic curation to which others are still exposed and once a kid is socialized they face…

Curating content is also borderline illegal because the only effective solution is synonymous with copyright violation.
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