Youtube has been essentially banned in my house after seeing the effect it had on my kids. The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content. Sadly - especially given the huge amount of actually great content on Youtube - everything that it wants to show my kids is absolutely dogshit garbage. A bunch of Gen Z kids with obviously wealthy families just acting like idiots. I couldn't stand it any more.
I am, in general, a fairly permissive and liberal-minded parent. I had to put my foot down and have just disabled the site on the devices they use.
It makes me sad because I know if they were directed to the right kinds of videos they could learn all kinds of things and be inspired by the creativity of the folks behind them. This is not what comes up in the feed and the content that they've become most interested in is the mental equivalent of eating off-brand Oreos for every meal. Hard pass.
Several kids in my household. YouTube plays a vastly different role for each, which is frustrating.
Oldest goes down rabbit hole of topics of interest - benign useless filler stuff, e.g. mostly pro sports commentary, random things like Disney ride trivia, and other random pop-culture filler. If left unchecked, i wouldn’t be surprised if they spent 8+ hours on YouTube. If moderated, YouTube gives them a fair amount of stuff to talk and connect with others about in real life. Overall impact: neutral to slightly positive if moderated to <1h/day. Food/drink equivalent: Honey Mustard and Onion Pretzel pieces (a few are great, but then you can’t stop and you end up eating 1500 calories and everything tastes wrong for 24h)
Younger teen: will consume insane amounts of gaming videos, most of the creators border on toxic personalities. We’ve banned a number of channels for them, but they find other shitty personalities. I can’t stand the content they consume, but I chalk a fair bit of that to my ignorance about teen culture and mostly grit my teeth. Covid was the worst. I hate YouTube because of their content choices. However, it does provide a small basis of connection to their group of friends. [edit: I also stupidly made a deal that w/ straight A’s I won’t be overly restrictive, which they’ve upheld, sigh] Overall impact: toxic to the point where every month or two I’m convinced to ban YouTube across every device in the house. Food/drink equivalent: Natty Light that’s barely chilled.
Pre-teen: by choice, they spend ~3/4 of their YouTube time learning new skills or facts. Mostly learning specific techniques in the iPad app Procreate, acrylic painting (irl), a ton of educational videos about wildlife/animals they love, etc. But more significantly, their YouTube use has created the reflex to “search first” whenever facing a knowledge/skill gap, then ask for help. They’re the only reason i don’t straight up block YouTube at the network level, for all devices. Overall impact: very positive. Food/drink equivalent: natto and rice.
There's more to being a successful human than straight A's in school, and for some people the A's are easy.
I think if the parent thinks the agreement they made was stupid and is now a detriment to their child's well-being, they should edit it.
Acknowledge having made a mistake. Don't pretend you were right from the start. That's an important part of the learning process, and your kid needs to know it's safe to make mistakes and adjust course later, that you're not stuck with something just because of one decision in the past.
Be clear on what concerns you and why (especially be sure that it's a concern for the child's well-being and not some need of your own that you're trying to meet by changing your kid) and have a conversation with this young person about it.
Eh, like many things in life, it’s not that simple, but the reality of it is that YouTube plays a role within a clear framework intended to bring wider sense of balance their life (BSA scouts, sports, literature I choose every now and then, etc). I wouldn’t quite phrase YouTube as being straight up detrimental to their well-being, it’s more that I personally don’t enjoy the baggage that comes with the benefits. So like Natty Lite, 1-2 are probably fine (even if in poor taste) but beyond that it’s a problem.
I largely agree, but I've not banned it. I just have explicitly told them they can only watch from the subscriptions we've curated. It requires monitoring of course, so they'll watch it on tv (Apple TV) when I'm present. My kids are young enough that they're never alone. Once they're not, I've been thinking if I can write a MITM proxy at home for youtube that somehow only allows content from explicit channels.
You could probably run a Plex server with something like TubeSync that would download offline copies automatically; pair this with a metadata agent and you'd still get all the playlist/thumbnail/description stuff.
> The problem, in short, was that Youtube continuously feeds them new content.
Does it? I feel like my son has been watching essentially the same 20-25 videos over and over again. Of course his youtube time is limited, but it doesn’t seem like it suggests anything but his three favorite channels.
The YouTube algorithm seems to steer you toward absolute shit. Age doesn't matter. Try just following it as an adult and you will end up in the toilet pretty fast.
I am, in general, a fairly permissive and liberal-minded parent. I had to put my foot down and have just disabled the site on the devices they use.
It makes me sad because I know if they were directed to the right kinds of videos they could learn all kinds of things and be inspired by the creativity of the folks behind them. This is not what comes up in the feed and the content that they've become most interested in is the mental equivalent of eating off-brand Oreos for every meal. Hard pass.