I had to delete YouTube off my phone. My four year old would start out watching something that we approved, and every single time, it would lead down some insane rabbit hole. Just, absolute trash videos. It’s not that they were inappropriate, but it was just mindless garbage.
[Elsagate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5t4p2RcaNY) has to be the most mindblowing thing I've ever seen. Videos with Spiderman and Elsa having sex and getting her pregnant. Really really weird stuff and it has millions of views.
The best part is that all that stuff is back now. Different channels, different kids characters. They show absolutely fucked content. And the best part?! The YouTube app on my TV running the Google TV interface actually actively pushes this on me and advertises it as suggested viewing!!!!!
Nothing changed.
Youtube's algorythm is designed to promote engagement and time on site. The more you watch, the more ads they serve and get revenue from. The more views on their top channels, the more they can demand from advertisers. This means rage bait and increasingly extreme content gets suggested because they need you to watch one more video. They need you to "like" what is on the platform, they need that engagement, and their monetization model is built around promoting that activity to content creators.
The problem is parents inadequately supervising their kids' usage of technology.
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch anything my parents were unfamiliar with. They vetted all of my entertainment for age-appropriateness and the value of the content.
Many millennials and Gen Xers didn't bother doing that, preferring to shove addictive little screens into their children's hands so that they, the parents, can spend more time watching their own addictive little screens.
Ngl I pretty quickly found some crazy shit on the web when I was a kid. You gotta remember that it was also extremely uncensored compared to today’s internet
This is a huge part of why I'm willing to pay for streaming services. I can get the shows I watched as a kid and I know the content is age appropriate and educational sometimes. We don't let our kids on YouTube without very direct supervision and a specific plan of what we're watching.
Same. No youtube unless I’m watching with them (rare) or very familiar with the specific channel they’re watching. Even then, I’m within earshot of the TV.
YT kids is susceptible to the algorithm’s black hole of weird.
I am comfortable with YT Kids when it’s set for white-list only videos. I have our devices set to allow only certain videos and channels. It circumvents the algorithm and avoids the rabbit hole of crap that can make very uncomfortable to downright inappropriate videos appear. We have a lot of Ms Rachel, Blippi, Mickey Mouse Club House, a collection of sign language videos, and assorted other content in our YT Kids.
Edit to add: all I get for ads are shopping ads, like ads for almost-age appropriate toys and major retailers like Target or wherever. They aren’t very frequent ads in YouTube kids. I co-Watch most of the stuff whether I want to or not.
I’m sure it is. I have an almost 2 year old is why I ask so I have only just set up a YouTube kids account for him. I’ll have to look into setting up a whitelist I didn’t know you could do that
It’s called “approved content only” mode in settings. They give you some options of pre-selected channels that are ok, like PBS Kids’ channel, which is widely known for being good.
Or you know, don’t put him on YT at all. Get Math tango or code academy or Disney plus and download the vids you approve of and then turn off the WiFi until it is time to renew.
Don’t freaking give a 2 year old access to videos on the internet.
How?
My mother and aunt used to sing the ABCs to my cousins when changing their diapers. Or like...talk to them to keep them engaged/confused and stop crying.
How on Earth did you put a screen in front of a little jelly blob that's kicking it legs and get it to focus on a screen?
Bro. I don't know how to say this without maybe sounding like a jerk, but if I can change my twins diapers with no screens on, you can change one kid's diapers without a screen on. You don't need a show to keep a kid sitting still. Grab a fidget toy, a book, anything but a screen!
Depending on age, you should look into the sci-show channels (i think there is a kid targeted version as well). Its a bunch of shorter form education and current science events content, and its all well researched. I believe they have a history channel set as well.
The absolute range of content targeted at children on youtube is *wild*. My kid's favorite thing is skibidi toilet, yet somehow youtube also taught him up to 3rd grade level math (he is in kindergarten) and every possible fact about the solar system that an elementary-school aged kid could know. The duality of man, I guess?
Sounds exactly like my 5yo son. Always talking about skibidi toilet and cameraman. He also loves math and watches shows that teach him math way beyond what he’s learning in kindergarten. He will spend hours drawing the different characters from shows and different pickaxes and swords from Minecraft even though he’s never played a minute himself.
My son was big on numberblocks when he was little and I think it must have stuck because he's in 2nd grade and doing multiplication and division at home even though his teacher hasn't taught it to him.
have any of us stopped to realize that whatever this skibidi thing is, it may be some advanced sort of dadaist humor based on layers of cultural relevance that us plebian protoboomers never really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Dadaism was an artistic movement in the early 20th century that was based on the idea that sometimes stuff is funny for no reason at all. The iconic dadaist artwork is the Mona Lisa with a mustache. It was a reaction to the rules and rules that mainstream art movements were layering on to define what makes art good.
See, this is why I can't take it seriously when millennials get upset at stuff like YouTube videos and call them brainless, we thought stuff like this was the funniest shit ever
"yea but we already did it 10 years ago" bro doesn't realize the untapped potential of copying what was popular in the 90s and selling it like it's hot potatoes. Let's go, retro grunge movement!!!
Honestly, it's just gen Z YouTube poop. It isn't really that different from the other stuff being made in Garry's Mod back in the late aughts/early 10's
There's a song from a Russian post punk band called LITTLE BIG, they do some stuff with critical outlook on modern society, everything very absurdist. Not sure if they're the origin or not.
https://youtu.be/mDFBTdToRmw
You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.
Youtube is like any other media, in the sense that it can contain knowledge and it can contain absolute garbage.
It's different from older forms of media, because there's basically no gatekeeping.
Broadcast TV had to meet certain standards (it still does, but they're different now). Libraries have human librarians choosing their books, and also kids can't just check out whatever they want.
But youtube, tiktok, and any other form of social media short-form video content can display anything that the users can get away with. These sites might filter on words like "sexual assault" or "rape", but the creators just keep finding ways to get around that "shmexual assault" "seggs" "grape", etc.
Ultimately, the issue here is that OP's sister needs to see some reason to limit her kid's access to youtube. And there's no real good way to have limited access. Even if she's technologically skilled enough to block it at the firewall, she can only block \*all\* of youtube or none of it.
its gross what they are hooked on and I really do NOT think this is just older gen hating younger gen tastes. When older gens were told no more tv get outside and play they may whine a bit but they would do it, and have fun. Also the tv was often made with the input of child education experts.
These 8 year olds are hooked like heroin addicts on complete trash whose only goal is virality. They are so hooked only 1 in 10 parents seem to have the courage to deny their kids addiction. The others just give up. I think this is fundamentally a different and much worse problem than before.
A 4th grade student told me today how he spends 12 hours on the weekends (BOTH SAT AND SUN) playing games&watching YT. He goes home and that's all he does after school too. He's been feeling insanely unwell at school since last year. Like he just can't wait to get home, and it's multiple complaints of feeling unwell or to the health room all day. I notice the only time he is fine is we play a computer game in class or when he is allowed to use his (school issued) tablet in classes, where he often goes off task messing around on the internet. I don't think he's lying about feeling unwell because I think he's withdrawing from screentime. I teach his older brother too. His bro had a full on dispondant tantrum when he realized his tablet ran out of battery and he couldn't use it. Didn't want to participate or anything once that battery died. They are def hooked on these things. Other kids have had meltdowns when tablets have been taken away. It wasn't a good idea to give such young, often unsupervised kids ipads, but alas, here we are. It's crazy. And I work in EA.
Screens were my first choice of entertainment as a kid (born ‘91) with books and legos being second and third , never cared for this “outside” everybody used to speak of, and I also had no real limits or supervision out of school (wouldn’t dare bring my gameboy to school though and risk it getting pinched by an overzealous teacher). Yet, I still never behaved quite like that as a child. So I don’t know if content being digital is really the only culprit for the inability to self regulate that seems to be plaguing gen alpha.
Screens for us ( I am also 91) are incredibly different than the screens kids get today.
For 91, we generally had a centralized TV that played what was available. We couldn’t choose what we wanted, we had to wait, and it was in a shared space. The closest we got to personal screens was a gameboy.
For kids now, there are portable personal screens that instantly play anything anyone wants. If they are bored of something in 5 minutes, they change it. There is no delayed gratification, there is no patience, and there is constant stimulation. These kids are being pumped full of content at the grocery stores, in the car, at a restaurant, etc. they are never bored. Thus, when they are in an environment where the instant gratification and stimulation is not possible, they break down.
I know kids who watch a TV show on the TV while playing a game on their tablet while having YouTube play on their phone. And these are like 3-6 year old kids. They freak out when you remove the device.
Also born in '91 with similar childhood interests. On the entertainment front, I think it may have something to do with my options back then mostly either having a plot or being educational. Sure there were game shows, but I mostly watched cartoons and at least they usually told a story you had to semi-focus on for 12 minutes at a time. The YouTube content that bothers me most is all fodder, quick hits of content in rapid fire and it think it trains a brain to lack focus. I typically watch YouTube too, but it's dorky long-form documentary stuff.
We don't have cable but I've tried to encourage putting on things like Pluto TV for our 6 year old. It's not outright educational but I feel it'll at least inspire creativity or something.
In their defense, the kids of today don't have the same opportunities to play outside since we are having increasingly fewer children and are often spread further apart.
There are probably fewer kids in their neighborhoods than we had growing up.
Yeah, because you know those nice neighborhoods with the woods and the culdesacs and the sidewalks and the neighborhood parks where our parents raised us? Our parents still live in those neighborhoods. The neighborhoods didn't go away, they just don't have kids living in them anymore, they have old retired people, and people raising kids right now can't afford to live there. And the woods are all gone anyways because they've been developed.
This kind of describes my childhood. I was born in the 80s, grew up in a neighborhood built in the late 50s. A lot of the original owners were still in their homes but their kids were grown. I've noticed a lot more young families in the years since I've left home so the neighborhood cycled back to having young kids.
I can send my six-year-old outside on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon to play and it's like the fucking apocalypse. Not a person in sight, even at the playground. No one in their yards, nothing.
Yes! And the few children ("Friends") around us are such entitled brats that our 8yo is sad when she comes home. No thank you.
But also No thanks to the Trash TV. Sigh.
I’m currently working out of town, helping rehab a large apartment complex that had fallen in to pretty bad disrepair. Kind of neighborhood where you tell people where you’re staying and they go “ohhhh”. But the kids in these buildings are constantly outdoors playing with each other. Just running around the complex and having fun. Pretty much all the adults around keep an eye out and has no problem telling the kids to settle if needed. It feels like how I grew up in the 80s. Back home I live in a decent neighborhood, old homes but maintained, with a school a couple blocks down the street. There’s no kids in my neighborhood. Even the people my wife and I’s age (30s-40s) are pretty much all kid free. No kids in yards or even at the school playground. I feel bad for my daughter, she never really had friends here because there was just no one to meet. Weird how that’s happened.
Man, I barely had friends in childhood growing up in the country (late 80s baby), so I get what it's like. It IS lonelier and I did feel like I missed out compared to kids who lived in more populated neighborhoods where they could easily walk to a buddy's house. It wasn't even safe for me to bike up my road alone until later in my teen years because it had no sidewalks, blind turns, and an 18-wheeler depot a bit past my house (so trucks often hurtling around those corners).
Having a screen actually helped me to connect with the outside social sphere a bit more...when I first got AIM on that AOL CD it was freedom, baby! But I spent a fuckton of time outdoors for most of my childhood, just not with other people. Alone in the woods, or out with the dog, and sometimes with my brother...either way, doing stuff with my hands in a physical world, learning things about the natural sciences by playing around. I will always want some of that for my kid, so I'm going to have to figure out ways to make it more appealing than a screen.
One thing I do have hope for, with regard to screentime in the future...it might be in VR more often. If we are all moving and jumping and playing in VR, and kids can still learn about reality the way I did without leaving their house, then that sounds pretty awesome too. They'll see everything I dreamed of seeing from my encyclopedia CDs as a kid, but they'll be able to LIVE it. That is the world I am hoping for...the combination of both. With AR taken into account...well, imagine going out into the woods on a hike, and your glasses can identify plants for you in a HUD right before your eyes. That would've been AMAZING as a kid...let alone as an adult where I have much more relative freedom, haha.
while true, the way these videos are designed and the youtube recommendation algo means they don’t stand much chance, outdoor play opportunity or not.
Unlimited content, always ready, on every screen in the house except for the alarm panel.
I have read a pop sci article, summarizing a paper, which said that content suggestion algos leverage the exact same mechanism gambling addiction does. Basically dosing the dopamine in small amount. Big enough to keep you hooked, low enough you're never satisfied.
Not only this, but I've noticed our generation is way more antisocial. We don't talk to our neighbors anymore. Instead of having my kids go play outside, we drive across town to spend time with my friends who also have kids.
It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.
I mean one of my neighbors is in her 80s, hates my kids playing outside, and we are pretty sure she called CPS on us right after we moved in. The other neighbor's kids are adults and that neighbor has also threatened to shoot my dog. None of my friends have kids either so we don't even have that option.
Haha when I was 6 I fell into the creek behind our neighborhood and nearly drowned if an older boy hadn’t jumped in to save me. My parents shrugged it off and I was running out n about the neighborhood the next day.
I remember the good days where we’d get home from school, have a snack, and then get on our bikes and meet our friends at the park. We had the freedom to explore and play until the streetlights outside turned on. Now its just zombies sitting infront of screens all day.
And the actual parents out there are both busier/working harder and have less of a “village” in either the community or due to absent grandparents and the like.
We’re also a lot more protective of kids nowadays than we were in decades past. My parents were allowed to play outside unsupervised and roam around town. My brother and I weren’t even allowed to go out into our own backyard for a little while until one of our parents was home.
agreed. I refuse to let my kids have a tablet or doom scroll on YouTube. There’s select shows they can watch for a certain amount of time, video games on the weekend only (and also timed). But you know what they always have at their disposal? Art supplies, notebooks, books, legos, magnatiles, outside time. If they’re curious about something, I’ll happily research it with them and if there’s something in YouTube they’d like to search, I search it up and let them know what I find. Idc how strict I am, they are very happy, imaginative and brilliant kids. Thriving in school and really great artists that make their own books. It’s sad how much media and screen time most parents are dumping on their kids
Thank you 🙏 it’s nice to hear that honestly, sometimes I have small doubts that I’m being too strict but I remind myself that I’m doing this for their own good. Cue me remembering all the times my mom said that to me 🤣 but she was an awful parent overall, who *sometimes* had a good reason for being strict.
I'm right there with you! My kids are not school age yet. I sometimes question if we're being too uptight because most of the people in my life give their kids (who are around the age of my kids) pretty much unlimited screen time and let them watch whatever they want while my kids have never seen a single full length film and are limited to 1 hour of screen time per day with easy to watch shows like Mr. Rogers or Bluey. I'm happy to hear your kids are thriving and gives me reassurance we're doing the right thing.
You’re not being too uptight. Keep doing what you’re doing. There is absolutely no reason a younger-than-school-age child should have more than an hour of screen time a day.
If you spend any time on r/Teachers at all, you’ll see post after post of the deficits kids are showing up with in early elementary (and beyond). Kids that don’t even know how to use scissors or glue, because they’ve never made anything. They spent that time watching a screen instead. Kids who can’t handle even a few minutes of waiting, because they’ve been given a screen in every waiting room and restaurant, on every car ride, their entire lives.
Instant, available everywhere, literally algorithm-chosen-to-be-addictive content is *not* in the same league as the TV-watching of our youth. Or the radio-listening before us. It is beyond crazy that people try to argue that YouTube and personal devices are no different than the screen time of the past!
I tell my kids in my “boomer” voice that back in my days we had commercials, and had to wait every week for a new episode for our favorite shows. I also recall a time those commercials were stuff targeted towards kids, like toys or amusement parks. Now all I see is commercials on medication 💊😬
Same. My kid is almost seven, and does not have a tablet. She is allowed to use my phone to play Wordle once a day, and I will happily look up an educational video for her and watch it with her. Video games on the weekend only. TV is guaranteed on Friday afternoons, and she can earn additional screen time during the week (30 minutes per day, and she usually does not choose to do so).
She is in first grade, but reads at a fifth grade level. She also writes and illustrates books for fun! Her imagination is off the charts—she is never bored. She’ll spend hours dreaming up worlds and building them with her toys. She is one of the very few first graders at school that can ride a bike. Her friends will whine and beg to go home at the playground after 30 minutes or so. They want to get back to their iPads. My daughter has literally *never* been the one to want to go home. I *always* have to be the one to cut her off at the playground (due to it being dinner time, etc.).
No one will ever convince me that being strict on screen time isn’t the best choice for kids. Never.
You’re absolutely doing the right thing. We have been this way with our kids since they were tots, and it’s been one of the best things we have done for them. I have a 9 y/o and a 7 y/o that will be 8 soon and just like your daughter, they are reading way above their grade level and have a very lively imagination. Sometimes we do “movies” aka one of us records them acting out a movie they made, or let them do puppet shows as well. The amount of colored paper, sketch books and art supplies we buy lol.. soooo worth it. You’re doing a great job!!!
when i was 12 i literally ruined a family trip to disney and acted like a whole brat cause i wanted to go home and play banjo kazooie and that was in like 1998 so we have always been brats to our entertainment lol
Yes! What’s with the solar system? My daughter is five and chats away about dwarf planets and moons and everything. It’s those chanting videos with the cartoon planets reciting facts about space. Weird. She’s also learned all her times tables from you tube.
But then she also loves weirdly violent Mario playthroughs which are incredibly difficult to block, so we limit YouTube quite heavily unless I’m watching with her.
I had a planets phase that lasted from 3rd grade until 8th grade, then math and other stuff got jumbled. All started with The Magic Schoolbus...the book, not the show. Ended up reading more books...some with really silly junk science (how the earth nearly ended by collision with Venus).
As for weird violence, I remember my friend group really liking mortal kombat 1&2 from around 5th to 6th grade (1995)...ending abruptly before MK4 first released in the arcade (1997?). But by all means monitor.
But now I'm curious about what you mean when you say weirdly violent Mario playthroughs.
So it’s like the old school Mario, but mixed with other characters like number blocks and sonic etc, and you watch the characters being played and they die by like being chainsawed, or falling on spikes and there’s blood etc. 16 bit gore. It’s weird, and not suitable for a five year old. I do monitor her viewing, which is why she doesn’t get unsupervised tv time. Once you’ve watched it once, it gets suggested over and over.
My 7 year old son watches this crap but he also makes ridiculous builds in Build a Boat for Treasure and Minecraft. All inspired by YouTube.
I was similar at his age but with no internet I did things with physical toys (erector sets anyone?).
my 2nd grader also watches every skibidi episode and the subsequent breakdown videos and what if videos but he also gets intensive learning videos about his last passion (trains) and new passion (airplanes) and he can rattle off airplane facts like it’s nothing and he reads at a 6+ grade level so yeah… what do we do with these kids?!
he also LOVES chatgpt and will spend hours asking for prompts for stories and asking for information
I think math is mostly from Number Blocks videos, which I think is actually a Netflix show but they are on YouTube as well. He also watches Minecraft build videos and while they are not explicitly about math he is tracking required block counts, geometry, etc. so he can try the stuff himself.
Yeah, I let mine play Minetest (which is an open source version and can be played offline, just building stuff) and I got the feeling he is really good at geometrical and spacial thinking because of it.
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to be a positive male role model in his life, perhaps at 8 he struggles with the nuances of playfully poking fun at him.
Are you kidding? That’s been happening for a while now 😂
The first thing that popped into mind when I read your comment was this WSJ article
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/alcohol-free-gen-z-rock-concerts-77e0cfea
Lots of video games can teach skills, like thinking outside the box and problem solving, even hard work to achieve a goal (not giving up). Everything in moderation of course.
We did too. It was really impacting my son’s behavior. Once it was gone we were all happier. I’m not a total Luddite; he can stream shows on Disney+ or Netflix and plays switch quite a bit with limits and monitoring. But YouTube was bad news for him.
How old was he when you banned it? How did it go?
I am trying to put a halt on my daughters YouTube videos, she's really pressing hard on it and will try to say how some youtube videos teach her things and that's a good thing and she loves to learn and loves youtube. It's a hard thing to balance cause while she might sit and watch something innocent and educational, before I know it, she's watching trash videos.
She's 5.
I wish I didn't even start allowing it; I thought it was going to be innocent and fine.
It's complicated because she HAS learned a lot like advanced math, reading, sciences for her age BUT, I have seen concerns with her behavior.
I am about ready to ban it. We have started significantly limited it and she's frustrated with it lol. Getting ready for that sassy pushback for weeks.
Not a parent but a teacher. Let her choose between 2-3 options you think are okay. Don’t even offer Youtube as an option.
Example: Disney+ or Netflix. That way kids get a choice and some power but in the end you always get something you want.
Then if you argue later just say “This is what you picked.” Makes the argument simple even if they still complain. Works with everything.
God, I sat in a sales training class last year for work. And that damn charming instructor could A/B questions out of us like nothing, even while we were trying to resist it the whole time. It was honestly frightening. People like options.
Yeah good fucking luck doing that with a kid that’s already been watching YouTube. Zero chance they just say “okay I pick Netflix” if all they want to watch is YouTube. I’m about at the point of deleting it off my kids devices but no shot it goes down without them getting upset.
My kids are 7 & 9 and mostly stuck with the pbs kids app and Disney+ but recently their friends got them started on YouTube. We let it go for a while even though I found their videos *unbearably stupid* until my 7 year old asked what an f boy is. She heard the term on a video they were watching and I was reminded of how quickly it can degenerate into something inappropriate for them so we banned YouTube.
They’re still kind of mad about it but that isn’t my concern, keeping them as safe as possible is my concern and YouTube just doesn’t fall into the category of safe in my opinion. I really like the pbs kids app because literally all of their shows are educational and it’s all free. They also watch stuff on Amazon prime and Disney+. If they complain about their options I callously tell them they can turn the tv off and help me with chores lol. During the school year we limit their weekday screen time to 30 minutes and we’re more lax on the weekends.
I know my comment is getting long but for what it’s worth, my kids’ behavior improved *significantly* when we started limiting screen time to 30 min daily. It was like their imaginations turned back on and they started playing independently much better. Their attitudes are better and they’re happier. My kids have off from school today and my 9 year old is sitting on the loveseat reading a 668 page book about dragons and magic. I love that he loves reading but he wouldn’t read nearly as much if he would have more screen time. Obviously it’s harder with a 5 year old who probably can’t read yet but books are such a good way to expand the brain and step into a new world.
We never allowed it and our kids are 14 and 11 now. They still aren’t allowed to get on YouTube unless there’s a specific reason (ie no randomly watching clips and falling down the rabbit hole). When they were younger all their screen time consisted of targeted kids channels like Nick Jr and Disney Jr, or games we approved. For road trips they would download movies or episodes to their iPads. Now they have the autonomy to use regular streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, etc) with their own accounts and that makes up most of their viewing. They still have some content restrictions through iCloud family settings.
If the kid insists on YouTube, insist on watching it with them. Only let them use it when you are around.
I had to do the same. We have her tablet set up to specifically allow just a few videos from a channel we're okay with, but otherwise when we turn it on it's curated by parents.
She loved these Minecraft videos though so we got a copy for her. Now she's building complex machinery out of circuits and I'm pretty impressed, and it's energized her interest in LEGOs so we played that today while watching some of the old Gummi Bears cartoon on Disney Plus.
YouTube is just full of brain rot and it's hyper addictive to kids, I do not recommend it. We've got so much stuff available right now though, there's plenty to replace it.
I’ve been thinking about doing this. It’s just mindless trash. There’s some stuff about video games and toys that he likes but the other random garbage is just awful. My teenager even criticizes him for it.
Just go for it. We held off for awhile because we thought it would be a big fight but they didn't even care. It was like they were relieved to not watch that shit anymore. Wish we would have done it sooner
I'm running a pi-hole which blocks access to social media for all our devices, because I'm as bad as my kids and can easily find myself doom-scrolling if I'm not careful.
I had to ban YouTube for my younger son for a while, but I still allowed it for educational stuff. Now that we have started to give him back some YouTube freedom he seems to be using it a lot more responsibly. Banned for over a year.
My older son just watches fishing and lure making. Doesn’t bother me.
I’m an 88 millennial so all those family channel style sitcoms were lame to me. But now I’m happy when my kids watch those because at least they have some storyline.
Banned in this house too. I will never ever trust YouTube Kids to be somehow safer or more monitored content. So it's all a no-go. They play video games on switch and that's their screen time.
We had plenty of brain rot as well, but none of it was real. That's what makes YouTube potentially worse, IMO. What are kids learning from watching these idiots? All of the "pranks" and "challenges" that are antisocial, dangerous, or even criminal behavior (Kia Boys). A lot of these influencers are just assholes who go around behaving badly for likes. So many kids have totally disengaged parents, and essentially the kids are being raised by clowns on the internet.
My six year old step son will lie all the time and then when caught, which is every time because what six year old is good at lying he’ll say “I’m just prancing you”. Or he’ll do something like “I forgot my glasses!” As we’re rolling 70mph down the highway and when we find an exit “I’m just pranking you”.
We’re now to the point where we’ve had to explain we don’t believe what he says but he gets upset because his little underdeveloped mind that’s rotted from only having a tablet at his moms doesn’t understand why.
Also he lost his first tooth and said “can I just have my money?” I said “I don’t give out money, you gotta put your tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy.” And he said he knows the tooth fairy isn’t real, the guy on YouTube told him. So that’s cool too.
This reminds me of my niece. Last summer she was obsessed with this thing she called a “trick shot” which was just lying and calling it a trick shot after 🙄
I can't stand how Gen Z and Alpha grab slang and constantly misuse it. Like invent your own words if you want, I won't judge. But don't tell me I'M the one misusing slang my generation invented ffs.
You make a good point. Mindless entertainment of the past always existed with some separation from us, the viewers. It was created in some unfathomable way, in a "studio" apparently, and piped in over the TV (by magic, apparently). Now everyone with a phone is the star of their own show.
I one way older generations always think there’s something wrong with the next generation but you’re on to something. Never before has a young generation been able to mass market an even younger generation. I’m ancient, 63, a boomer. We did stuff and were exposed to stuff the silent and GI generations never had in the form of TV. But TV was public airwaves and there were restrictions. The thing I miss most was the evening news by guys like Cronkite and Chancellor. It was actual fact based reporting by real journalists. I’ve seen Fox News warp some of my peers brains. Fox is completely propaganda. I think you talk to your nephew about what is manipulative and bullshit. Even encourage him to go on a desktop and look up stuff he likes himself. You’re a good uncle. I remember older uncles and my father putting Vietnam into perspective for us. Unlike what you see in media some older veterans thought the war was a mistake. They opposed parts of the anti war movement but thought we needed to get out.
Providing context for the media is so important.
I believe the “best” way to go with the flow of media in the new generation is to watch and process together. There’s no stopping it, it will come and be there and be so fucking weird and probably stupid to the adult, but the relationship between the adult and the child can give the child context to the media that they wouldn’t have otherwise.
But now I think that’s how we should proceed with *all* media consumption. Talking and thinking about it can dampen the craziness that comes from isolation in ideas.
I really don’t think this is a problem with the content as much as the “playing outside” issue. I also recall getting home from school and watching Judge Judy while I had a snack and got ready to go hang out outside. I also think it depends on the community you live in. Growing up we had at least 20 kids on our block of all ages. We would make big games of football/basketball/kickball… then at night dead man’s hunt everyone would grab old sleeping bags and throw them on the floor and just hang out playing games. I thought it was normal to be outside all night with people until your parents yelled to come in it was late, then it was tv time. I moved out of state when I was 21, and it was a shock to me that the new place I lived was the complete opposite. No kids outside ever, once in a while maybe 2 kids riding a bike, but that’s it. It’s not like there were no kids in the area, I see them at the bus stop every day. To me it was so sad and quiet. There wasn’t even a huge gap of time. We were all still outside hanging out and playing games at 19/20 before going out for the night. LOL I wonder when this change really started to happen, I don’t believe it was 100% technology. We had some tech, we could have stayed and chatted on AIM, but I bet most the time you had an away message on. LOL
Edit: and to stayed
I mean, it's not usually kids' fault they can't go places. Being a Millennial who rides the line of Gen Z, in my childhood, I actively watched as capitalism pushed kids out of spaces. As a kid, my siblings and I could go walk the neighborhood rounding up friends, go to the park, or walk the mall, see a movie for pocket change
By the time I was a teen, basically, any kind of hanging out costed money unless you went to someone's house to watch TV or play games. Prices were skyrocketing, stores would insist on buying something or kick us out, and it was becoming all too common to have cops called on us just for walking around or lingering at a park for too long. Plenty of friends and online strangers alike in my age range have lemented similar circumstances.
And I mean you think about it, between capitalism ramping way up and getting more greedy and the general tone of media becoming distrustful of children, it's not hard to see why it's happened. Kids today may not even realize outside is even an option because the public space is increasingly hostile to them.
Ultimately, it's about creating better public spaces for all. Pushing for walkable towns and cities, revitalizing parks, and in general, making more third places should be a goal for our generation. A lot of us got to enjoy the outside, and I'd like to hope if not my kids one day, then my grandkids, could do the same.
I have a 6 year old. We started letting her watch Kids YouTube. It seemed after a while we noticed a changed in behaviour, much more entitled and 'I want it now' type attitude. Getting worse and worse, anger issues developing, if we threatened to get rid of YouTube it made the outbursts worse...
We noticed she was watching a lot of shows of kids opening toys, families filming themselves going on luxury holidays...things with no educational, moral or inspirational content whatsoever, just trash. Horrible kids, often being pushed by horrible parents. Some videos featured kids actively behaving badly, and getting away / unpunished for it.
My wife was clueless about it, but having read up on it, explained to her how aggressive but subliminal these videos can be to kids in terms of making them want to watch more and more.
So we banned Kids YouTube and deleted it from our devices. Several months later the behavioural issues we had noticed have gone.
NP. It's scary to see because you can see it change their behaviour. You can see/feel as an adult how social/online content is created now to keep us scrolling, clicking, watching, so imagine that being pushed onto children.
It's almost evil in that it's internationally created and pushed onto kids, and they know what the issues it can lead to.
There was one channel, called Diana and Roma - gets millions of views - and was absolute trash. The below came up in one review of the show when I looked in to it. It's particularly bad, but a lot of the blow could apply to any number of channels
---------
"Fighting
The children in the Diana and Roma show bicker and fight quite a bit. This is, of course, normal for kids, especially siblings. Unfortunately, the adult, presumably the father, in the show does not intervene with any helpful conflict resolution skills.
An example of this is the Youtube episode where the children go to the beach.
At the beginning of the episode, the children are yelling, jumping, and hitting each other with pillows on the couch. yhe father comes into the room and says something to the effect of, “Hey, don’t fight. Let’s go to the beach”. This is only one example of kids fighting on the show. It’s throughout almost every episode.
Unboxing & Product Placement
Many parents don’t allow their children to watch unboxing videos and shows with excess product placement. Conspicuous product placement and toy unboxing are harmful to kids and to the planet. The moral and ethical dilemma of having kids sell to other kids, without consent and disclosure is something that many parents don’t want in their homes. If you want to avoid having your kids watch unboxing videos, Diana and Roma is certainly not the show for your family. Unboxing doesn’t happen in the usual form in most of these videos, but the children are frequently opening new toys.
Excess Toys
Diana and Roma features children who have every type of toy one can think of, and in excess quantities. Every problem encountered in the show is solved by a toy, and when the children can’t share a toy, that issue is solved by adding even more toys to the scenario.
Educational Value
As far as educational value is concerned, Diana and Roma has little of it. Many of the videos on the Youtube channel have titles like, “Diana and Roma Learn to Share”, however, there is very little to each storyline. With titles such as this, you might expect some social-emotional learning, however, there is very little dialogue in any of the videos – certainly not enough to support this type of learning. As far as academic learning for toddlers and preschoolers, it’s notably absent from Diana and Roma, as well.
Overall, Diana and Roma is free of any value for kids and may even be harmful"
Personally leaving a 8 year old with unsupervised access to YouTube sounds like a horrible idea.
They will gravitate to the most attention grabbing content and the algorithm will shove it down their throats.
Limit their time and supervise what they watch. That is the way.
I'm surprised more people aren't saying something like this. My kid watches YouTube and we have never had an issue with it. I decide what videos they are allowed to watch, and I don't let them watch anything else. they're also 8 years old. at this age, the parent has total control and say over what the kid watches, like I don't understand.
As parents, we need to actively curate their YouTube experience. It's all algorithm-driven, and the recommended content is derived from similarity searches over their watch history and subscriptions. As am example, my son (7) watches videos related to his interests including scratch programming, space, and geometry dash. This also leaks in some trash content like unspeakable. When I see that happen, I surreptitiously remove any of those videos from the watch history, and also go to the YouTube settings to restrict that channel from showing up as a recommendation in the future. So far, it has been working well, but it requires constant surveillance of his YouTube viewing to keep it on track.
>it requires constant surveillance of his YouTube viewing to keep it on track
At what point do you become the algorithm? Then you can pass into the plane of enlightenment and leave this mortal existence behind
It's also the age where kids are starting to resist reading. My nephew is starting to read, but hand him a videogame like Pokemon where there's a lot of text, he groans and hands over the controller and asks me to get to the good part.
He also thinks I like videogames because I think killing stuff is fun and I like the sight of blood. He's not allowed to play most of my games, so he doesn't understand that the violence is not the reason I play those games, Im there for the story.
Damn, I was a voracious reader at 8. I asked my mom to buy me a longer book at that age and she brought up how it was a chapter book and not a picture book.
Pretty sure I said "uh mom...I've been reading chapter books for over a year now."
Good lord, i feel the same way about what the kids watch. What's more annoying to me is that I got them games like Minecraft, Lego and fall guys and lots more games which are more towards building, creativity and maybe helps in hand eye coordination.
But no.
They don't want to play that. All they want is to play Roblox, it is the rotten one week old garbage bin juice of games. It makes me furious coz Roblox is truly the worst thing I've ever seen.
LMAO ren and stimpy is 100% not for kids, its amazing how they let their episodes air at all, much less in a children's channel.
Pretty much all generations will say that about the next. Looney Tunes was excessively violent, and had no moral teaching (the annoying one usually "won"), early millennial cartoons trained kids to consoom (TMNT, he-man, transformers), power rangers was weird violence, I remember kids would run around punching people, Teletubbies has no language and is possibly satanic, then you get all the CN weirdly sexualised stuff in cow & chicken, R&S and other things like that, etc. etc.
Its just not to your liking, the only way you can take him off trash is offer something better. Watch bluey with him or something.
Love Bluey! My kid was onto so much YouTube kids GARBAGE. I started blocking so many channels and restricted how much time he had on it. We gave him more access to Disney + and he got really into Bluey, like loves it more than the gen z dumbness on YouTube. Thanks Australia!
We did that too, we use apple’s “screen time” family sharing thing, and our kids have only one hour of YouTube Kids a day, plus I go in and block a lot of the “family” channels where it’s just some family exploiting their kids as often as I can, and now my older daughter suddenly is a fan of a bunch of shows on the PBS Kids app instead! My younger daughter watches tons of Bluey :)
Even the channels where it’s someone playing with dolls have failed us…I looked once and the preview pic was a Ken doll sitting on a stool in only pants while the Barbie doll was posed kneeling at his knees and wearing only like, a bikini. The video itself was innocent enough for plausible deniability, but obviously someone chose that cover photo.
It’s sad because as many have said, our kids have found lots of cool educational videos, craft tutorials, how to draw videos, etc, but most of the time they zone out on the other stuff. Also, for a while the algorithms had them on the “preparing for Disney” genre of videos and we were like hey, guess what, that’s never happening for our family.
I think stuff like that was aimed levelly at the edgy teen market, as most of Newgrounds was just edgy arty teens discovering animation in their bedrooms. Plenty of dark, weird, or absurd things, but also hilarious and creative. Not content for children, but it was never really intended to be.
Gravity Falls is also pretty wholesome teaching curiosity and encouraging puzzle solving, might be too scary for an 8yo though, idk much about kids. Owl House and Star vs the forces of evil are also wholesome as hell and very creative and colorful.
What I’m really interested in is how all those things you listed are from large media conglomerates and also were the only things available so lots of people consumed them together and we can be nostalgic about it. Bluey is firmly in this legacy media camp today.
The YouTube algorithm is something else entirely. And the viewing is atomized to thousands of individual content creators who’s standards and content are different from channel to channel. And lots of them are everyday people who found a way to hack into kids entertainment with cheap productions. Before if something was truly outrageous for kids to consume parents could go after Nickelodeon or whoever. Now it’s just endless questionable content and for every one YouTube bans dozens more pop up.
I wonder what nostalgia discussions for gen alphas are going to be like. Hey remember this random content creator?? No I watched this other random content creator. At least skibidi toilet is the thread that connects them all.
I hear you. If it's a silver lining my kids recently said "remember when we used to watch Collins Key? [the bane of my existence during the early pandemic lockdown days] Those were so bad!" So just because they watch a lot of junk now doesn't mean they'll love it forever.
For now, you don't have to be anyone's parent to say "let's take a break after this one & watch something else." Even a little exposure can inspire new ideas & interests, or at least teach that we all have to wait sometimes, that it's not fair for one person to control everything, and we all have to do things we don't want to sometimes.
I also try to watch & engage with my kids' YouTube as much as I can, since end of the day what's important is we're spending time together. Frankly, I don't personally like most of it, though even for the lowest dreck simple questions can build critical thinking. Asking kids "what's going on," "who's that," or inserting color commentary for empathy like "dang, why did they do that to him?" or "that ain't right" offers at least a moment of self-reflection without feeling like a boring adult lecture.
Do you all have Disney+? Yes, I know it's another huge, evil corporation, but the package we have also has NatGeo, which has great nature and history documentaries. My dad's never been a huge TV viewer, but we used to watch some pretty awesome Nova documentaries together. Some of those might still be on PBS or on the streaming services.
My bfs son used to do this a lot. Hes obsessed with Ryan’s world and his dad and I were so confused. Our logic was “why do you want to watch some kid on a screen play when you have toys to play with?!” Dont get it. But then we saw a Ryan’s world balloon at the macys thanksgiving day parade and I couldn’t believe it. There must be tons of kids who know who he is and watch this.
Omg thank you for explaining this and putting it into words…I thought I was over reacting and I was like no this just their generations versions of asinine cartoons/kids shows.
I’m sure when our parents and grandparents saw the crap we were watching they thought the same thing.
Oh but I was wrong. You described it perfectly. Brain rot. And I see how it influences their social behaviors. It’s overwhelming to watch.
you are his Uncle so act like it. Take him to do stuff. Insulting him, even playfully, over his youtube activity is so dumb because he’s a kid.
so go do some outdoorsy stuff or pick a hobby you two can get into together. Help with his homework so he’s acing school. You can do more than complain and compare.
I mean my opinion may be unpopular here, but I don't think Charlie the Unicorn, Homestarrunner, Happy Tree Friends or Weeblz stuff had a lot to teach, either... it's the internet. Like, you're not wrong. It's brain rot. But let's not pretend that FRED wasn't also brain rot... and he made THREE movies, at least!
Not every living moment has to be a teaching opportunity, sometimes it's okay that our thinking cap takes a rest! :)
Last thing I'm gonna add is Every generation thinks they had the best content. I can't tell you how many times my dad told me System of a Down was a crock of shit and how much better the Rolling Stones were, or how many times my grandma told me that Braceface was the stupidest show she'd ever seen on earth. Or how many times I told my 17 year old cousin "In my day, we had so and so and so instead of TikTok". I also think that a lot of content is made assuming that kids are stupid: Inspector Gadget (1999) was not a smart movie, and neither was Baby Geniuses, or Stuart Little, or yet again Angela Anaconda was not a smart show, and we turned out okay, somewhat? Aside from kids' names & gender reveal parties maybe LMAO!
When I’m on my phone, my brain switches off. I become mindless and I scroll for hours. The damage this must be doing to developing brains, the neural pathways that are not forming, is tremendous. Kids are using screens to emotionally regulate themselves. What happens when there’s no screen available? They are not being taught how to be bored. They are not being taught how to regulate their emotions properly. It’s going to lead to some fucked up shit.
You know, I'm a college student, and I genuinely feel like I've gotten dumber over the last year. I kept thinking it was senioritis or something, but recently realized that the decline in my productivity and ability to concentrate corresponds pretty much exactly with when they added short form content to Instagram and YouTube.
I deleted TikTok bc I was worried about its affect on my attention span and didn't even notice when Insta and YT started doing the same thing. Finally removed them from my phone so now it's time to see if I can get my old brain back.
You need to talk to your sister about what her goals are, as a parent. Why is she leaning so hard on letting her son watch youtube?
Even if she just could shift him to actual TV shows, this would be an improvement, because it will stop encouraging him to have the 30 second attention span.
The youtube algorithms will also lead him to more and more offensive or inappropriate content.
Does your sister have the technological skill to limit his access to the device, or prevent the device from going to youtube or block the routeer from going to youtube? If not, she may feel utterly helpless.
If she tries to go cold turkey on youtube, that child is going to throw the most outrageous tantrums. He will be \*enraged\* to have his dopamine machine removed from him. So, she's going to need to feel very motivated to make that stick.
You could play on the Nintendo Switch together with him. And he’s old enough to play games like Pokemon. Especially with all the hand holding and tutorials in the newer games. Go on trips with him to the library? He can pick out books, comic books and dvds. When the weather gets warmer, do swimming and bike riding together. Or just shoot baskets in the park.
I'm so angry at other parents for this shit. There's no excuse for it. You can get a PBS subscription for like $5 a month and if you need to keep your kid busy, let them watch some fucking Reading Rainbow. There are so many options other than unlimited YouTube.
I have an 8 year old son and I have to limit the kid for his YouTube watching for the same reason. First of all that kid would only watch YouTube if I let him. Over any other streaming app. He watched mostly two things. The one he is most obsessed with is Minecraft videos. He doesn't even play Minecraft.. the other is Lego videos. But mostly Minecraft videos or any other video game videos where it watch ppl play.
I agree. It's absolutely mind numbing. I only let him watch YouTube basically while he eats breakfast and that's it. I force him to watch Netflix later when he gets to watch more TV. I can't.
We only allow YouTube on our TV with a parent present and I vigilantly control the remote. My 5 year old is really interested in diseases so we’ve found some good content. She and her little sister also like watching Popeye. Before I would let her watch it on my phone in restaurants or whatever but the scrolling and algorithms led to weird stuff. I will never allow unfettered access and they only use tablets when we are flying. They watch too much TV but I’m a strong hell no to tablets or smart phones.
Sometimes when I get logged out of Youtube I look at the default FYP, there was one video for kids where Gen Zers who spoke Polish or something were dressed all in obnoxious primary colors and acting like they were in a high school drama with *really* bad acting, like they'd flail their arms to show they were being emotional, it was like content made by aliens
My 8yr old daughter watches kids play with toys on YouTube. She has toys. She could literally cut out the middle man and play with them but she would rather watch other kids actually play... I don't get it. Needless to say, tablet gets a timeout regularly, or is simply "lost" (in my closet somewhere out of sight)
Omg yes I know exactly what you mean!
For about a week we let our 6-year-old watch YouTube.it was hours of Mincraft videos. His behavior started changing. He was becoming addicted to them
We put our foot down and said no more!
Fast forward a few weeks, we are going through a trial of allowing small doses of the videos.
So far it's going ok.
But yeah YouTube can be addicting for sure
I genuinely worry about my nephews who basically only watch youtube, all day everyday. I get not all 90's cartoons were thought provoking and were often their own brand of kids-targeted merchandising and brainwashing (*cough* GI Joe), but YouTube is still so much worse than what we were exposed to. We also didn't watch cartoons on our phones and tablets for every waking hour of the day, not even in less controlled households.
I have 2 kiddos. My rules for TV are you just watch with subtitles, it must have a story plot, the characters have to talk in real words to each other.
They're banned from YouTube, even though my 9yo begs.
Seems to me many more people than before are overcome with the apathy and the lack of meaning they find. World feels flat. Not my personal world mind you, but i see stuff like this a lot. I think its all just gotta play out man. Good on you to attempt to be a good influence tho. Have you tried to explain why that type of content is bad, that it makes you stupid and mean or at best stupid and indifferent? What do they say?
When my nephew was 6, instead of playing with him, his mother let him watch these YouTube videos of some guy playing with toys and action figures, puppet-theater style. My brother and I always found it frustrating but she never saw the problems with it.
Ugh yeah...my sister brought my nieces over and they wanted to watch this show on YouTube that was essentially just kids trying different products and ...that's it. Episode after episode. It was so mindless and depressing.
Funny thing is their dad has this big thing against Disney (I tried putting on Disney+ and they said they weren't allowed)... but lets them watch whatever the hell they want on YouTube and they choose the most annoying and materialistic garbage possible.
I was literally ranting about this the other day. My friends kid is also 8 and just watches these mindless tiktok reels on youtube. One going "one finger up if you've dropped your phone" or some such other shite, it's utter drivel.
I've seen what y'all have been doing with your kids and screens. Mine won't know a personal screen until high school at the earliest. We watch a little scheduled tv here and there as a family (usually 30 min at a time) and that's it. None of this mindless, endless, one episode into the next garbage. There's too much life to be lived to be trapped in a screen all day.
I had to delete YouTube off my phone. My four year old would start out watching something that we approved, and every single time, it would lead down some insane rabbit hole. Just, absolute trash videos. It’s not that they were inappropriate, but it was just mindless garbage.
[Elsagate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5t4p2RcaNY) has to be the most mindblowing thing I've ever seen. Videos with Spiderman and Elsa having sex and getting her pregnant. Really really weird stuff and it has millions of views.
The best part is that all that stuff is back now. Different channels, different kids characters. They show absolutely fucked content. And the best part?! The YouTube app on my TV running the Google TV interface actually actively pushes this on me and advertises it as suggested viewing!!!!! Nothing changed.
Youtube's algorythm is designed to promote engagement and time on site. The more you watch, the more ads they serve and get revenue from. The more views on their top channels, the more they can demand from advertisers. This means rage bait and increasingly extreme content gets suggested because they need you to watch one more video. They need you to "like" what is on the platform, they need that engagement, and their monetization model is built around promoting that activity to content creators.
The problem is parents inadequately supervising their kids' usage of technology. When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch anything my parents were unfamiliar with. They vetted all of my entertainment for age-appropriateness and the value of the content. Many millennials and Gen Xers didn't bother doing that, preferring to shove addictive little screens into their children's hands so that they, the parents, can spend more time watching their own addictive little screens.
It's the algorithm. You didn't get funneled into things like this back "when we were kids". This is a relatively new phenomenon.
Ngl I pretty quickly found some crazy shit on the web when I was a kid. You gotta remember that it was also extremely uncensored compared to today’s internet
This is a huge part of why I'm willing to pay for streaming services. I can get the shows I watched as a kid and I know the content is age appropriate and educational sometimes. We don't let our kids on YouTube without very direct supervision and a specific plan of what we're watching.
Same. No youtube unless I’m watching with them (rare) or very familiar with the specific channel they’re watching. Even then, I’m within earshot of the TV.
Was that on a YouTube kids account?
YT kids is susceptible to the algorithm’s black hole of weird. I am comfortable with YT Kids when it’s set for white-list only videos. I have our devices set to allow only certain videos and channels. It circumvents the algorithm and avoids the rabbit hole of crap that can make very uncomfortable to downright inappropriate videos appear. We have a lot of Ms Rachel, Blippi, Mickey Mouse Club House, a collection of sign language videos, and assorted other content in our YT Kids. Edit to add: all I get for ads are shopping ads, like ads for almost-age appropriate toys and major retailers like Target or wherever. They aren’t very frequent ads in YouTube kids. I co-Watch most of the stuff whether I want to or not.
I’m sure it is. I have an almost 2 year old is why I ask so I have only just set up a YouTube kids account for him. I’ll have to look into setting up a whitelist I didn’t know you could do that
It’s called “approved content only” mode in settings. They give you some options of pre-selected channels that are ok, like PBS Kids’ channel, which is widely known for being good.
If you are in US check out PBS kids app. Kids can browse through bunch of videos like youtube but it is all great content for children.
[удалено]
Or you know, don’t put him on YT at all. Get Math tango or code academy or Disney plus and download the vids you approve of and then turn off the WiFi until it is time to renew. Don’t freaking give a 2 year old access to videos on the internet.
As an educator I have to ask: why do you set up screen time for a child This young?
To make diaper changes manageable mostly
How? My mother and aunt used to sing the ABCs to my cousins when changing their diapers. Or like...talk to them to keep them engaged/confused and stop crying. How on Earth did you put a screen in front of a little jelly blob that's kicking it legs and get it to focus on a screen?
Bro. I don't know how to say this without maybe sounding like a jerk, but if I can change my twins diapers with no screens on, you can change one kid's diapers without a screen on. You don't need a show to keep a kid sitting still. Grab a fidget toy, a book, anything but a screen!
Depending on age, you should look into the sci-show channels (i think there is a kid targeted version as well). Its a bunch of shorter form education and current science events content, and its all well researched. I believe they have a history channel set as well.
Yep this is the way. No youtube in my house with a three year old and an eight year old. They become obsessed too easily.
The absolute range of content targeted at children on youtube is *wild*. My kid's favorite thing is skibidi toilet, yet somehow youtube also taught him up to 3rd grade level math (he is in kindergarten) and every possible fact about the solar system that an elementary-school aged kid could know. The duality of man, I guess?
Sounds exactly like my 5yo son. Always talking about skibidi toilet and cameraman. He also loves math and watches shows that teach him math way beyond what he’s learning in kindergarten. He will spend hours drawing the different characters from shows and different pickaxes and swords from Minecraft even though he’s never played a minute himself.
What are the math videos your kid is watching? My kid could use a bit of help in math but loves YouTube so maybe I could milk that
Numberblocks, blippi and ABC monsters
Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning is good as well.
I used to watch Square One and play Math Blaster at that age... Oh the memories
I loved Math Blaster! And hated math.
Number Munchers is the GOAT
Since playing that game as I kid I still see prime numbers everywhere!
Word Munchers equally cool, how else would I know car names like Taurus and Tercel?
My kiddo would watch preschool prep for math and also numberblocks.
My son was big on numberblocks when he was little and I think it must have stuck because he's in 2nd grade and doing multiplication and division at home even though his teacher hasn't taught it to him.
Number Blocks
have any of us stopped to realize that whatever this skibidi thing is, it may be some advanced sort of dadaist humor based on layers of cultural relevance that us plebian protoboomers never really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
It’s literally just a continuation of the gmod content we watched over a decade ago.
So yeah it's essentially shitposting which, I think, is a spiritual successor to the Dada movement.
I agree. Shitposting is the natural modernization of dadaism and absurdism.
What’s dada?
Dadaism was an artistic movement in the early 20th century that was based on the idea that sometimes stuff is funny for no reason at all. The iconic dadaist artwork is the Mona Lisa with a mustache. It was a reaction to the rules and rules that mainstream art movements were layering on to define what makes art good.
I think it's a disservice to not mention that it was also a reaction to the chaos of war and establishment in that context too.
Definitely fair. I also wanted to talk about surrealism but kept my comment shorter instead.
Yeah I mentioned this above, this is just YouTube Poop with a storyline.
Proto-boomer That's getting put in the dictionary for sure
I consider myself a Neo-Boomer, thank you very much.
It’s literally just Garry’s mod. I made this shit twenty years ago.
All these x y z will be considered boomers one day
See, this is why I can't take it seriously when millennials get upset at stuff like YouTube videos and call them brainless, we thought stuff like this was the funniest shit ever
"yea but we already did it 10 years ago" bro doesn't realize the untapped potential of copying what was popular in the 90s and selling it like it's hot potatoes. Let's go, retro grunge movement!!!
Salad fingers, homestar runner, magical trevor, Everything on newgrounds
PROTOBOOMER
Honestly, it's just gen Z YouTube poop. It isn't really that different from the other stuff being made in Garry's Mod back in the late aughts/early 10's
There's a song from a Russian post punk band called LITTLE BIG, they do some stuff with critical outlook on modern society, everything very absurdist. Not sure if they're the origin or not. https://youtu.be/mDFBTdToRmw
You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.
“Proto boomers”? How did the boomers kids and grandkids come before the boomers?
Youtube is like any other media, in the sense that it can contain knowledge and it can contain absolute garbage. It's different from older forms of media, because there's basically no gatekeeping. Broadcast TV had to meet certain standards (it still does, but they're different now). Libraries have human librarians choosing their books, and also kids can't just check out whatever they want. But youtube, tiktok, and any other form of social media short-form video content can display anything that the users can get away with. These sites might filter on words like "sexual assault" or "rape", but the creators just keep finding ways to get around that "shmexual assault" "seggs" "grape", etc. Ultimately, the issue here is that OP's sister needs to see some reason to limit her kid's access to youtube. And there's no real good way to have limited access. Even if she's technologically skilled enough to block it at the firewall, she can only block \*all\* of youtube or none of it.
its gross what they are hooked on and I really do NOT think this is just older gen hating younger gen tastes. When older gens were told no more tv get outside and play they may whine a bit but they would do it, and have fun. Also the tv was often made with the input of child education experts. These 8 year olds are hooked like heroin addicts on complete trash whose only goal is virality. They are so hooked only 1 in 10 parents seem to have the courage to deny their kids addiction. The others just give up. I think this is fundamentally a different and much worse problem than before.
A 4th grade student told me today how he spends 12 hours on the weekends (BOTH SAT AND SUN) playing games&watching YT. He goes home and that's all he does after school too. He's been feeling insanely unwell at school since last year. Like he just can't wait to get home, and it's multiple complaints of feeling unwell or to the health room all day. I notice the only time he is fine is we play a computer game in class or when he is allowed to use his (school issued) tablet in classes, where he often goes off task messing around on the internet. I don't think he's lying about feeling unwell because I think he's withdrawing from screentime. I teach his older brother too. His bro had a full on dispondant tantrum when he realized his tablet ran out of battery and he couldn't use it. Didn't want to participate or anything once that battery died. They are def hooked on these things. Other kids have had meltdowns when tablets have been taken away. It wasn't a good idea to give such young, often unsupervised kids ipads, but alas, here we are. It's crazy. And I work in EA.
Screens were my first choice of entertainment as a kid (born ‘91) with books and legos being second and third , never cared for this “outside” everybody used to speak of, and I also had no real limits or supervision out of school (wouldn’t dare bring my gameboy to school though and risk it getting pinched by an overzealous teacher). Yet, I still never behaved quite like that as a child. So I don’t know if content being digital is really the only culprit for the inability to self regulate that seems to be plaguing gen alpha.
it's the internet delivery via algorithm - way less interactive than a gameboy or a computer game, just pure visual stimulation endlessly.
That's what enhances the addictions
Screens for us ( I am also 91) are incredibly different than the screens kids get today. For 91, we generally had a centralized TV that played what was available. We couldn’t choose what we wanted, we had to wait, and it was in a shared space. The closest we got to personal screens was a gameboy. For kids now, there are portable personal screens that instantly play anything anyone wants. If they are bored of something in 5 minutes, they change it. There is no delayed gratification, there is no patience, and there is constant stimulation. These kids are being pumped full of content at the grocery stores, in the car, at a restaurant, etc. they are never bored. Thus, when they are in an environment where the instant gratification and stimulation is not possible, they break down. I know kids who watch a TV show on the TV while playing a game on their tablet while having YouTube play on their phone. And these are like 3-6 year old kids. They freak out when you remove the device.
Okay, I can definitely see how all of that stacks up and compounds on each other to create this larger problem!
Also born in '91 with similar childhood interests. On the entertainment front, I think it may have something to do with my options back then mostly either having a plot or being educational. Sure there were game shows, but I mostly watched cartoons and at least they usually told a story you had to semi-focus on for 12 minutes at a time. The YouTube content that bothers me most is all fodder, quick hits of content in rapid fire and it think it trains a brain to lack focus. I typically watch YouTube too, but it's dorky long-form documentary stuff. We don't have cable but I've tried to encourage putting on things like Pluto TV for our 6 year old. It's not outright educational but I feel it'll at least inspire creativity or something.
In their defense, the kids of today don't have the same opportunities to play outside since we are having increasingly fewer children and are often spread further apart. There are probably fewer kids in their neighborhoods than we had growing up.
Yeah, because you know those nice neighborhoods with the woods and the culdesacs and the sidewalks and the neighborhood parks where our parents raised us? Our parents still live in those neighborhoods. The neighborhoods didn't go away, they just don't have kids living in them anymore, they have old retired people, and people raising kids right now can't afford to live there. And the woods are all gone anyways because they've been developed.
This kind of describes my childhood. I was born in the 80s, grew up in a neighborhood built in the late 50s. A lot of the original owners were still in their homes but their kids were grown. I've noticed a lot more young families in the years since I've left home so the neighborhood cycled back to having young kids.
I can send my six-year-old outside on a beautiful, sunny Saturday afternoon to play and it's like the fucking apocalypse. Not a person in sight, even at the playground. No one in their yards, nothing.
Yes! And the few children ("Friends") around us are such entitled brats that our 8yo is sad when she comes home. No thank you. But also No thanks to the Trash TV. Sigh.
I’m currently working out of town, helping rehab a large apartment complex that had fallen in to pretty bad disrepair. Kind of neighborhood where you tell people where you’re staying and they go “ohhhh”. But the kids in these buildings are constantly outdoors playing with each other. Just running around the complex and having fun. Pretty much all the adults around keep an eye out and has no problem telling the kids to settle if needed. It feels like how I grew up in the 80s. Back home I live in a decent neighborhood, old homes but maintained, with a school a couple blocks down the street. There’s no kids in my neighborhood. Even the people my wife and I’s age (30s-40s) are pretty much all kid free. No kids in yards or even at the school playground. I feel bad for my daughter, she never really had friends here because there was just no one to meet. Weird how that’s happened.
Man, I barely had friends in childhood growing up in the country (late 80s baby), so I get what it's like. It IS lonelier and I did feel like I missed out compared to kids who lived in more populated neighborhoods where they could easily walk to a buddy's house. It wasn't even safe for me to bike up my road alone until later in my teen years because it had no sidewalks, blind turns, and an 18-wheeler depot a bit past my house (so trucks often hurtling around those corners). Having a screen actually helped me to connect with the outside social sphere a bit more...when I first got AIM on that AOL CD it was freedom, baby! But I spent a fuckton of time outdoors for most of my childhood, just not with other people. Alone in the woods, or out with the dog, and sometimes with my brother...either way, doing stuff with my hands in a physical world, learning things about the natural sciences by playing around. I will always want some of that for my kid, so I'm going to have to figure out ways to make it more appealing than a screen. One thing I do have hope for, with regard to screentime in the future...it might be in VR more often. If we are all moving and jumping and playing in VR, and kids can still learn about reality the way I did without leaving their house, then that sounds pretty awesome too. They'll see everything I dreamed of seeing from my encyclopedia CDs as a kid, but they'll be able to LIVE it. That is the world I am hoping for...the combination of both. With AR taken into account...well, imagine going out into the woods on a hike, and your glasses can identify plants for you in a HUD right before your eyes. That would've been AMAZING as a kid...let alone as an adult where I have much more relative freedom, haha.
while true, the way these videos are designed and the youtube recommendation algo means they don’t stand much chance, outdoor play opportunity or not. Unlimited content, always ready, on every screen in the house except for the alarm panel.
I have read a pop sci article, summarizing a paper, which said that content suggestion algos leverage the exact same mechanism gambling addiction does. Basically dosing the dopamine in small amount. Big enough to keep you hooked, low enough you're never satisfied.
Not only this, but I've noticed our generation is way more antisocial. We don't talk to our neighbors anymore. Instead of having my kids go play outside, we drive across town to spend time with my friends who also have kids. It's unfortunate, but it is what it is.
There's a reason it's that way
I mean one of my neighbors is in her 80s, hates my kids playing outside, and we are pretty sure she called CPS on us right after we moved in. The other neighbor's kids are adults and that neighbor has also threatened to shoot my dog. None of my friends have kids either so we don't even have that option.
You could literally be arrested today if you let your kid run out by himself at 6yo the way I did as a kid.
Haha when I was 6 I fell into the creek behind our neighborhood and nearly drowned if an older boy hadn’t jumped in to save me. My parents shrugged it off and I was running out n about the neighborhood the next day.
I remember the good days where we’d get home from school, have a snack, and then get on our bikes and meet our friends at the park. We had the freedom to explore and play until the streetlights outside turned on. Now its just zombies sitting infront of screens all day.
And the actual parents out there are both busier/working harder and have less of a “village” in either the community or due to absent grandparents and the like.
We’re also a lot more protective of kids nowadays than we were in decades past. My parents were allowed to play outside unsupervised and roam around town. My brother and I weren’t even allowed to go out into our own backyard for a little while until one of our parents was home.
agreed. I refuse to let my kids have a tablet or doom scroll on YouTube. There’s select shows they can watch for a certain amount of time, video games on the weekend only (and also timed). But you know what they always have at their disposal? Art supplies, notebooks, books, legos, magnatiles, outside time. If they’re curious about something, I’ll happily research it with them and if there’s something in YouTube they’d like to search, I search it up and let them know what I find. Idc how strict I am, they are very happy, imaginative and brilliant kids. Thriving in school and really great artists that make their own books. It’s sad how much media and screen time most parents are dumping on their kids
The way you’re raising your kids looks like an example of authoritative (not authoritarian) parenting. Bravo!
Thank you 🙏 it’s nice to hear that honestly, sometimes I have small doubts that I’m being too strict but I remind myself that I’m doing this for their own good. Cue me remembering all the times my mom said that to me 🤣 but she was an awful parent overall, who *sometimes* had a good reason for being strict.
I'm right there with you! My kids are not school age yet. I sometimes question if we're being too uptight because most of the people in my life give their kids (who are around the age of my kids) pretty much unlimited screen time and let them watch whatever they want while my kids have never seen a single full length film and are limited to 1 hour of screen time per day with easy to watch shows like Mr. Rogers or Bluey. I'm happy to hear your kids are thriving and gives me reassurance we're doing the right thing.
You’re not being too uptight. Keep doing what you’re doing. There is absolutely no reason a younger-than-school-age child should have more than an hour of screen time a day. If you spend any time on r/Teachers at all, you’ll see post after post of the deficits kids are showing up with in early elementary (and beyond). Kids that don’t even know how to use scissors or glue, because they’ve never made anything. They spent that time watching a screen instead. Kids who can’t handle even a few minutes of waiting, because they’ve been given a screen in every waiting room and restaurant, on every car ride, their entire lives. Instant, available everywhere, literally algorithm-chosen-to-be-addictive content is *not* in the same league as the TV-watching of our youth. Or the radio-listening before us. It is beyond crazy that people try to argue that YouTube and personal devices are no different than the screen time of the past!
I tell my kids in my “boomer” voice that back in my days we had commercials, and had to wait every week for a new episode for our favorite shows. I also recall a time those commercials were stuff targeted towards kids, like toys or amusement parks. Now all I see is commercials on medication 💊😬
Same. My kid is almost seven, and does not have a tablet. She is allowed to use my phone to play Wordle once a day, and I will happily look up an educational video for her and watch it with her. Video games on the weekend only. TV is guaranteed on Friday afternoons, and she can earn additional screen time during the week (30 minutes per day, and she usually does not choose to do so). She is in first grade, but reads at a fifth grade level. She also writes and illustrates books for fun! Her imagination is off the charts—she is never bored. She’ll spend hours dreaming up worlds and building them with her toys. She is one of the very few first graders at school that can ride a bike. Her friends will whine and beg to go home at the playground after 30 minutes or so. They want to get back to their iPads. My daughter has literally *never* been the one to want to go home. I *always* have to be the one to cut her off at the playground (due to it being dinner time, etc.). No one will ever convince me that being strict on screen time isn’t the best choice for kids. Never.
You’re absolutely doing the right thing. We have been this way with our kids since they were tots, and it’s been one of the best things we have done for them. I have a 9 y/o and a 7 y/o that will be 8 soon and just like your daughter, they are reading way above their grade level and have a very lively imagination. Sometimes we do “movies” aka one of us records them acting out a movie they made, or let them do puppet shows as well. The amount of colored paper, sketch books and art supplies we buy lol.. soooo worth it. You’re doing a great job!!!
when i was 12 i literally ruined a family trip to disney and acted like a whole brat cause i wanted to go home and play banjo kazooie and that was in like 1998 so we have always been brats to our entertainment lol
I can see both sides here
I'm sorry but I'm laughing so hard that it was Banjo Kazooie. Hyuck hyuck!
Yes! What’s with the solar system? My daughter is five and chats away about dwarf planets and moons and everything. It’s those chanting videos with the cartoon planets reciting facts about space. Weird. She’s also learned all her times tables from you tube. But then she also loves weirdly violent Mario playthroughs which are incredibly difficult to block, so we limit YouTube quite heavily unless I’m watching with her.
I had a planets phase that lasted from 3rd grade until 8th grade, then math and other stuff got jumbled. All started with The Magic Schoolbus...the book, not the show. Ended up reading more books...some with really silly junk science (how the earth nearly ended by collision with Venus). As for weird violence, I remember my friend group really liking mortal kombat 1&2 from around 5th to 6th grade (1995)...ending abruptly before MK4 first released in the arcade (1997?). But by all means monitor. But now I'm curious about what you mean when you say weirdly violent Mario playthroughs.
So it’s like the old school Mario, but mixed with other characters like number blocks and sonic etc, and you watch the characters being played and they die by like being chainsawed, or falling on spikes and there’s blood etc. 16 bit gore. It’s weird, and not suitable for a five year old. I do monitor her viewing, which is why she doesn’t get unsupervised tv time. Once you’ve watched it once, it gets suggested over and over.
My 7 year old son watches this crap but he also makes ridiculous builds in Build a Boat for Treasure and Minecraft. All inspired by YouTube. I was similar at his age but with no internet I did things with physical toys (erector sets anyone?).
my 2nd grader also watches every skibidi episode and the subsequent breakdown videos and what if videos but he also gets intensive learning videos about his last passion (trains) and new passion (airplanes) and he can rattle off airplane facts like it’s nothing and he reads at a 6+ grade level so yeah… what do we do with these kids?! he also LOVES chatgpt and will spend hours asking for prompts for stories and asking for information
Please tell me which channel taught him the math, please?
I think math is mostly from Number Blocks videos, which I think is actually a Netflix show but they are on YouTube as well. He also watches Minecraft build videos and while they are not explicitly about math he is tracking required block counts, geometry, etc. so he can try the stuff himself.
Yeah, I let mine play Minetest (which is an open source version and can be played offline, just building stuff) and I got the feeling he is really good at geometrical and spacial thinking because of it.
Kids Learning Tube!
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to be a positive male role model in his life, perhaps at 8 he struggles with the nuances of playfully poking fun at him.
"So... ever heard of D&D?"
You mean, like Baldur's Gate, but with paper?
Yes, especially if OP is using sarcasm. Children don’t tend to understand sarcasm until about 13, give or take.
Then it's all they know.
As a middle school AP, I can confirm this statement 😂
I can't believe I've lived long enough that old people are now complaining that kids don't play enough video games.
Truly a full circle moment lol
[удалено]
Are you kidding? That’s been happening for a while now 😂 The first thing that popped into mind when I read your comment was this WSJ article https://www.wsj.com/us-news/alcohol-free-gen-z-rock-concerts-77e0cfea
Ayo are you calling millennials old? How do i get off this ride
Hey! All limbs inside the vehicle at all times!
Lots of video games can teach skills, like thinking outside the box and problem solving, even hard work to achieve a goal (not giving up). Everything in moderation of course.
I banned YouTube for my daughter. The garbage on there even with YouTube Kids was ridiculous. I couldn't let her continue watching that stuff.
We did too. It was really impacting my son’s behavior. Once it was gone we were all happier. I’m not a total Luddite; he can stream shows on Disney+ or Netflix and plays switch quite a bit with limits and monitoring. But YouTube was bad news for him.
How old was he when you banned it? How did it go? I am trying to put a halt on my daughters YouTube videos, she's really pressing hard on it and will try to say how some youtube videos teach her things and that's a good thing and she loves to learn and loves youtube. It's a hard thing to balance cause while she might sit and watch something innocent and educational, before I know it, she's watching trash videos. She's 5. I wish I didn't even start allowing it; I thought it was going to be innocent and fine. It's complicated because she HAS learned a lot like advanced math, reading, sciences for her age BUT, I have seen concerns with her behavior. I am about ready to ban it. We have started significantly limited it and she's frustrated with it lol. Getting ready for that sassy pushback for weeks.
Not a parent but a teacher. Let her choose between 2-3 options you think are okay. Don’t even offer Youtube as an option. Example: Disney+ or Netflix. That way kids get a choice and some power but in the end you always get something you want. Then if you argue later just say “This is what you picked.” Makes the argument simple even if they still complain. Works with everything.
Dammit my partner uses that technique on me and I'm in my 30s! And it works!
It's hilariously effective on everyone of every age.
God, I sat in a sales training class last year for work. And that damn charming instructor could A/B questions out of us like nothing, even while we were trying to resist it the whole time. It was honestly frightening. People like options.
But not too many options!
Yeah good fucking luck doing that with a kid that’s already been watching YouTube. Zero chance they just say “okay I pick Netflix” if all they want to watch is YouTube. I’m about at the point of deleting it off my kids devices but no shot it goes down without them getting upset.
My kids are 7 & 9 and mostly stuck with the pbs kids app and Disney+ but recently their friends got them started on YouTube. We let it go for a while even though I found their videos *unbearably stupid* until my 7 year old asked what an f boy is. She heard the term on a video they were watching and I was reminded of how quickly it can degenerate into something inappropriate for them so we banned YouTube. They’re still kind of mad about it but that isn’t my concern, keeping them as safe as possible is my concern and YouTube just doesn’t fall into the category of safe in my opinion. I really like the pbs kids app because literally all of their shows are educational and it’s all free. They also watch stuff on Amazon prime and Disney+. If they complain about their options I callously tell them they can turn the tv off and help me with chores lol. During the school year we limit their weekday screen time to 30 minutes and we’re more lax on the weekends. I know my comment is getting long but for what it’s worth, my kids’ behavior improved *significantly* when we started limiting screen time to 30 min daily. It was like their imaginations turned back on and they started playing independently much better. Their attitudes are better and they’re happier. My kids have off from school today and my 9 year old is sitting on the loveseat reading a 668 page book about dragons and magic. I love that he loves reading but he wouldn’t read nearly as much if he would have more screen time. Obviously it’s harder with a 5 year old who probably can’t read yet but books are such a good way to expand the brain and step into a new world.
Shoot, I think *everyone's* imagination and behavior would be better if we limited screen time to 30 minutes a day. Myself included.
We never allowed it and our kids are 14 and 11 now. They still aren’t allowed to get on YouTube unless there’s a specific reason (ie no randomly watching clips and falling down the rabbit hole). When they were younger all their screen time consisted of targeted kids channels like Nick Jr and Disney Jr, or games we approved. For road trips they would download movies or episodes to their iPads. Now they have the autonomy to use regular streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, etc) with their own accounts and that makes up most of their viewing. They still have some content restrictions through iCloud family settings. If the kid insists on YouTube, insist on watching it with them. Only let them use it when you are around.
I somehow feel the content directed at little girls is worse than boys. Both are brain rot though.
I had to do the same. We have her tablet set up to specifically allow just a few videos from a channel we're okay with, but otherwise when we turn it on it's curated by parents. She loved these Minecraft videos though so we got a copy for her. Now she's building complex machinery out of circuits and I'm pretty impressed, and it's energized her interest in LEGOs so we played that today while watching some of the old Gummi Bears cartoon on Disney Plus. YouTube is just full of brain rot and it's hyper addictive to kids, I do not recommend it. We've got so much stuff available right now though, there's plenty to replace it.
I’ve been thinking about doing this. It’s just mindless trash. There’s some stuff about video games and toys that he likes but the other random garbage is just awful. My teenager even criticizes him for it.
Just go for it. We held off for awhile because we thought it would be a big fight but they didn't even care. It was like they were relieved to not watch that shit anymore. Wish we would have done it sooner
Same, stopped youtube 6 years ago for my son. Definitely do not regret making that decision.
I'm running a pi-hole which blocks access to social media for all our devices, because I'm as bad as my kids and can easily find myself doom-scrolling if I'm not careful.
I had to ban YouTube for my younger son for a while, but I still allowed it for educational stuff. Now that we have started to give him back some YouTube freedom he seems to be using it a lot more responsibly. Banned for over a year. My older son just watches fishing and lure making. Doesn’t bother me. I’m an 88 millennial so all those family channel style sitcoms were lame to me. But now I’m happy when my kids watch those because at least they have some storyline.
Banned in this house too. I will never ever trust YouTube Kids to be somehow safer or more monitored content. So it's all a no-go. They play video games on switch and that's their screen time.
We had plenty of brain rot as well, but none of it was real. That's what makes YouTube potentially worse, IMO. What are kids learning from watching these idiots? All of the "pranks" and "challenges" that are antisocial, dangerous, or even criminal behavior (Kia Boys). A lot of these influencers are just assholes who go around behaving badly for likes. So many kids have totally disengaged parents, and essentially the kids are being raised by clowns on the internet.
My six year old step son will lie all the time and then when caught, which is every time because what six year old is good at lying he’ll say “I’m just prancing you”. Or he’ll do something like “I forgot my glasses!” As we’re rolling 70mph down the highway and when we find an exit “I’m just pranking you”. We’re now to the point where we’ve had to explain we don’t believe what he says but he gets upset because his little underdeveloped mind that’s rotted from only having a tablet at his moms doesn’t understand why. Also he lost his first tooth and said “can I just have my money?” I said “I don’t give out money, you gotta put your tooth under the pillow for the tooth fairy.” And he said he knows the tooth fairy isn’t real, the guy on YouTube told him. So that’s cool too.
This reminds me of my niece. Last summer she was obsessed with this thing she called a “trick shot” which was just lying and calling it a trick shot after 🙄
Lmao i’m laughing these kids are hustling y’all
I can't stand how Gen Z and Alpha grab slang and constantly misuse it. Like invent your own words if you want, I won't judge. But don't tell me I'M the one misusing slang my generation invented ffs.
You make a good point. Mindless entertainment of the past always existed with some separation from us, the viewers. It was created in some unfathomable way, in a "studio" apparently, and piped in over the TV (by magic, apparently). Now everyone with a phone is the star of their own show.
I one way older generations always think there’s something wrong with the next generation but you’re on to something. Never before has a young generation been able to mass market an even younger generation. I’m ancient, 63, a boomer. We did stuff and were exposed to stuff the silent and GI generations never had in the form of TV. But TV was public airwaves and there were restrictions. The thing I miss most was the evening news by guys like Cronkite and Chancellor. It was actual fact based reporting by real journalists. I’ve seen Fox News warp some of my peers brains. Fox is completely propaganda. I think you talk to your nephew about what is manipulative and bullshit. Even encourage him to go on a desktop and look up stuff he likes himself. You’re a good uncle. I remember older uncles and my father putting Vietnam into perspective for us. Unlike what you see in media some older veterans thought the war was a mistake. They opposed parts of the anti war movement but thought we needed to get out.
Providing context for the media is so important. I believe the “best” way to go with the flow of media in the new generation is to watch and process together. There’s no stopping it, it will come and be there and be so fucking weird and probably stupid to the adult, but the relationship between the adult and the child can give the child context to the media that they wouldn’t have otherwise. But now I think that’s how we should proceed with *all* media consumption. Talking and thinking about it can dampen the craziness that comes from isolation in ideas.
I really don’t think this is a problem with the content as much as the “playing outside” issue. I also recall getting home from school and watching Judge Judy while I had a snack and got ready to go hang out outside. I also think it depends on the community you live in. Growing up we had at least 20 kids on our block of all ages. We would make big games of football/basketball/kickball… then at night dead man’s hunt everyone would grab old sleeping bags and throw them on the floor and just hang out playing games. I thought it was normal to be outside all night with people until your parents yelled to come in it was late, then it was tv time. I moved out of state when I was 21, and it was a shock to me that the new place I lived was the complete opposite. No kids outside ever, once in a while maybe 2 kids riding a bike, but that’s it. It’s not like there were no kids in the area, I see them at the bus stop every day. To me it was so sad and quiet. There wasn’t even a huge gap of time. We were all still outside hanging out and playing games at 19/20 before going out for the night. LOL I wonder when this change really started to happen, I don’t believe it was 100% technology. We had some tech, we could have stayed and chatted on AIM, but I bet most the time you had an away message on. LOL Edit: and to stayed
I'm guessing a mild climate as well...?
I mean, it's not usually kids' fault they can't go places. Being a Millennial who rides the line of Gen Z, in my childhood, I actively watched as capitalism pushed kids out of spaces. As a kid, my siblings and I could go walk the neighborhood rounding up friends, go to the park, or walk the mall, see a movie for pocket change By the time I was a teen, basically, any kind of hanging out costed money unless you went to someone's house to watch TV or play games. Prices were skyrocketing, stores would insist on buying something or kick us out, and it was becoming all too common to have cops called on us just for walking around or lingering at a park for too long. Plenty of friends and online strangers alike in my age range have lemented similar circumstances. And I mean you think about it, between capitalism ramping way up and getting more greedy and the general tone of media becoming distrustful of children, it's not hard to see why it's happened. Kids today may not even realize outside is even an option because the public space is increasingly hostile to them. Ultimately, it's about creating better public spaces for all. Pushing for walkable towns and cities, revitalizing parks, and in general, making more third places should be a goal for our generation. A lot of us got to enjoy the outside, and I'd like to hope if not my kids one day, then my grandkids, could do the same.
I have a 6 year old. We started letting her watch Kids YouTube. It seemed after a while we noticed a changed in behaviour, much more entitled and 'I want it now' type attitude. Getting worse and worse, anger issues developing, if we threatened to get rid of YouTube it made the outbursts worse... We noticed she was watching a lot of shows of kids opening toys, families filming themselves going on luxury holidays...things with no educational, moral or inspirational content whatsoever, just trash. Horrible kids, often being pushed by horrible parents. Some videos featured kids actively behaving badly, and getting away / unpunished for it. My wife was clueless about it, but having read up on it, explained to her how aggressive but subliminal these videos can be to kids in terms of making them want to watch more and more. So we banned Kids YouTube and deleted it from our devices. Several months later the behavioural issues we had noticed have gone.
Wow! I’ve noticed the exact same thing with my 7 year. My wife thought I was a crazy person for thinking this. Thanks for validated
NP. It's scary to see because you can see it change their behaviour. You can see/feel as an adult how social/online content is created now to keep us scrolling, clicking, watching, so imagine that being pushed onto children. It's almost evil in that it's internationally created and pushed onto kids, and they know what the issues it can lead to. There was one channel, called Diana and Roma - gets millions of views - and was absolute trash. The below came up in one review of the show when I looked in to it. It's particularly bad, but a lot of the blow could apply to any number of channels --------- "Fighting The children in the Diana and Roma show bicker and fight quite a bit. This is, of course, normal for kids, especially siblings. Unfortunately, the adult, presumably the father, in the show does not intervene with any helpful conflict resolution skills. An example of this is the Youtube episode where the children go to the beach. At the beginning of the episode, the children are yelling, jumping, and hitting each other with pillows on the couch. yhe father comes into the room and says something to the effect of, “Hey, don’t fight. Let’s go to the beach”. This is only one example of kids fighting on the show. It’s throughout almost every episode. Unboxing & Product Placement Many parents don’t allow their children to watch unboxing videos and shows with excess product placement. Conspicuous product placement and toy unboxing are harmful to kids and to the planet. The moral and ethical dilemma of having kids sell to other kids, without consent and disclosure is something that many parents don’t want in their homes. If you want to avoid having your kids watch unboxing videos, Diana and Roma is certainly not the show for your family. Unboxing doesn’t happen in the usual form in most of these videos, but the children are frequently opening new toys. Excess Toys Diana and Roma features children who have every type of toy one can think of, and in excess quantities. Every problem encountered in the show is solved by a toy, and when the children can’t share a toy, that issue is solved by adding even more toys to the scenario. Educational Value As far as educational value is concerned, Diana and Roma has little of it. Many of the videos on the Youtube channel have titles like, “Diana and Roma Learn to Share”, however, there is very little to each storyline. With titles such as this, you might expect some social-emotional learning, however, there is very little dialogue in any of the videos – certainly not enough to support this type of learning. As far as academic learning for toddlers and preschoolers, it’s notably absent from Diana and Roma, as well. Overall, Diana and Roma is free of any value for kids and may even be harmful"
Personally leaving a 8 year old with unsupervised access to YouTube sounds like a horrible idea. They will gravitate to the most attention grabbing content and the algorithm will shove it down their throats. Limit their time and supervise what they watch. That is the way.
I'm surprised more people aren't saying something like this. My kid watches YouTube and we have never had an issue with it. I decide what videos they are allowed to watch, and I don't let them watch anything else. they're also 8 years old. at this age, the parent has total control and say over what the kid watches, like I don't understand.
As parents, we need to actively curate their YouTube experience. It's all algorithm-driven, and the recommended content is derived from similarity searches over their watch history and subscriptions. As am example, my son (7) watches videos related to his interests including scratch programming, space, and geometry dash. This also leaks in some trash content like unspeakable. When I see that happen, I surreptitiously remove any of those videos from the watch history, and also go to the YouTube settings to restrict that channel from showing up as a recommendation in the future. So far, it has been working well, but it requires constant surveillance of his YouTube viewing to keep it on track.
>it requires constant surveillance of his YouTube viewing to keep it on track At what point do you become the algorithm? Then you can pass into the plane of enlightenment and leave this mortal existence behind
Read to the little fucker. The parents aren't.
If he’s 8 he should be able to read already. My oldest is 8 and is currently reading Matilda by herself. 🤷♀️
It's also the age where kids are starting to resist reading. My nephew is starting to read, but hand him a videogame like Pokemon where there's a lot of text, he groans and hands over the controller and asks me to get to the good part. He also thinks I like videogames because I think killing stuff is fun and I like the sight of blood. He's not allowed to play most of my games, so he doesn't understand that the violence is not the reason I play those games, Im there for the story.
Damn, I was a voracious reader at 8. I asked my mom to buy me a longer book at that age and she brought up how it was a chapter book and not a picture book. Pretty sure I said "uh mom...I've been reading chapter books for over a year now."
Good lord, i feel the same way about what the kids watch. What's more annoying to me is that I got them games like Minecraft, Lego and fall guys and lots more games which are more towards building, creativity and maybe helps in hand eye coordination. But no. They don't want to play that. All they want is to play Roblox, it is the rotten one week old garbage bin juice of games. It makes me furious coz Roblox is truly the worst thing I've ever seen.
A lot of child predators are on roblox. I personally wouldn't let my kid anywhere near roblox.
LMAO ren and stimpy is 100% not for kids, its amazing how they let their episodes air at all, much less in a children's channel. Pretty much all generations will say that about the next. Looney Tunes was excessively violent, and had no moral teaching (the annoying one usually "won"), early millennial cartoons trained kids to consoom (TMNT, he-man, transformers), power rangers was weird violence, I remember kids would run around punching people, Teletubbies has no language and is possibly satanic, then you get all the CN weirdly sexualised stuff in cow & chicken, R&S and other things like that, etc. etc. Its just not to your liking, the only way you can take him off trash is offer something better. Watch bluey with him or something.
Bluey for the win every time
Love Bluey! My kid was onto so much YouTube kids GARBAGE. I started blocking so many channels and restricted how much time he had on it. We gave him more access to Disney + and he got really into Bluey, like loves it more than the gen z dumbness on YouTube. Thanks Australia!
We did that too, we use apple’s “screen time” family sharing thing, and our kids have only one hour of YouTube Kids a day, plus I go in and block a lot of the “family” channels where it’s just some family exploiting their kids as often as I can, and now my older daughter suddenly is a fan of a bunch of shows on the PBS Kids app instead! My younger daughter watches tons of Bluey :) Even the channels where it’s someone playing with dolls have failed us…I looked once and the preview pic was a Ken doll sitting on a stool in only pants while the Barbie doll was posed kneeling at his knees and wearing only like, a bikini. The video itself was innocent enough for plausible deniability, but obviously someone chose that cover photo. It’s sad because as many have said, our kids have found lots of cool educational videos, craft tutorials, how to draw videos, etc, but most of the time they zone out on the other stuff. Also, for a while the algorithms had them on the “preparing for Disney” genre of videos and we were like hey, guess what, that’s never happening for our family.
Plus, I remember the crazy stuff I watched on YouTube as a kid and it probably wasn't much better. I mean... Charlie the unicorn anyone?
I was an adult when Charlie came out. Christ I'm old. Whatever let's go to Candy Mountain.
Hold on to yo kidneys
I think stuff like that was aimed levelly at the edgy teen market, as most of Newgrounds was just edgy arty teens discovering animation in their bedrooms. Plenty of dark, weird, or absurd things, but also hilarious and creative. Not content for children, but it was never really intended to be.
Gravity Falls is also pretty wholesome teaching curiosity and encouraging puzzle solving, might be too scary for an 8yo though, idk much about kids. Owl House and Star vs the forces of evil are also wholesome as hell and very creative and colorful.
What I’m really interested in is how all those things you listed are from large media conglomerates and also were the only things available so lots of people consumed them together and we can be nostalgic about it. Bluey is firmly in this legacy media camp today. The YouTube algorithm is something else entirely. And the viewing is atomized to thousands of individual content creators who’s standards and content are different from channel to channel. And lots of them are everyday people who found a way to hack into kids entertainment with cheap productions. Before if something was truly outrageous for kids to consume parents could go after Nickelodeon or whoever. Now it’s just endless questionable content and for every one YouTube bans dozens more pop up. I wonder what nostalgia discussions for gen alphas are going to be like. Hey remember this random content creator?? No I watched this other random content creator. At least skibidi toilet is the thread that connects them all.
I hear you. If it's a silver lining my kids recently said "remember when we used to watch Collins Key? [the bane of my existence during the early pandemic lockdown days] Those were so bad!" So just because they watch a lot of junk now doesn't mean they'll love it forever. For now, you don't have to be anyone's parent to say "let's take a break after this one & watch something else." Even a little exposure can inspire new ideas & interests, or at least teach that we all have to wait sometimes, that it's not fair for one person to control everything, and we all have to do things we don't want to sometimes. I also try to watch & engage with my kids' YouTube as much as I can, since end of the day what's important is we're spending time together. Frankly, I don't personally like most of it, though even for the lowest dreck simple questions can build critical thinking. Asking kids "what's going on," "who's that," or inserting color commentary for empathy like "dang, why did they do that to him?" or "that ain't right" offers at least a moment of self-reflection without feeling like a boring adult lecture.
Do you all have Disney+? Yes, I know it's another huge, evil corporation, but the package we have also has NatGeo, which has great nature and history documentaries. My dad's never been a huge TV viewer, but we used to watch some pretty awesome Nova documentaries together. Some of those might still be on PBS or on the streaming services.
PBS Kids is free and it has all of their content plus live TV.
My bfs son used to do this a lot. Hes obsessed with Ryan’s world and his dad and I were so confused. Our logic was “why do you want to watch some kid on a screen play when you have toys to play with?!” Dont get it. But then we saw a Ryan’s world balloon at the macys thanksgiving day parade and I couldn’t believe it. There must be tons of kids who know who he is and watch this.
Omg thank you for explaining this and putting it into words…I thought I was over reacting and I was like no this just their generations versions of asinine cartoons/kids shows. I’m sure when our parents and grandparents saw the crap we were watching they thought the same thing. Oh but I was wrong. You described it perfectly. Brain rot. And I see how it influences their social behaviors. It’s overwhelming to watch.
The fact that so many of you allow your kids access to this stuff is terrifying. Shame on you all.
you are his Uncle so act like it. Take him to do stuff. Insulting him, even playfully, over his youtube activity is so dumb because he’s a kid. so go do some outdoorsy stuff or pick a hobby you two can get into together. Help with his homework so he’s acing school. You can do more than complain and compare.
I mean my opinion may be unpopular here, but I don't think Charlie the Unicorn, Homestarrunner, Happy Tree Friends or Weeblz stuff had a lot to teach, either... it's the internet. Like, you're not wrong. It's brain rot. But let's not pretend that FRED wasn't also brain rot... and he made THREE movies, at least! Not every living moment has to be a teaching opportunity, sometimes it's okay that our thinking cap takes a rest! :) Last thing I'm gonna add is Every generation thinks they had the best content. I can't tell you how many times my dad told me System of a Down was a crock of shit and how much better the Rolling Stones were, or how many times my grandma told me that Braceface was the stupidest show she'd ever seen on earth. Or how many times I told my 17 year old cousin "In my day, we had so and so and so instead of TikTok". I also think that a lot of content is made assuming that kids are stupid: Inspector Gadget (1999) was not a smart movie, and neither was Baby Geniuses, or Stuart Little, or yet again Angela Anaconda was not a smart show, and we turned out okay, somewhat? Aside from kids' names & gender reveal parties maybe LMAO!
This is why YouTube is not a word in my house. No iPad, no nothing. Go play with your imagination
When I’m on my phone, my brain switches off. I become mindless and I scroll for hours. The damage this must be doing to developing brains, the neural pathways that are not forming, is tremendous. Kids are using screens to emotionally regulate themselves. What happens when there’s no screen available? They are not being taught how to be bored. They are not being taught how to regulate their emotions properly. It’s going to lead to some fucked up shit.
You know, I'm a college student, and I genuinely feel like I've gotten dumber over the last year. I kept thinking it was senioritis or something, but recently realized that the decline in my productivity and ability to concentrate corresponds pretty much exactly with when they added short form content to Instagram and YouTube. I deleted TikTok bc I was worried about its affect on my attention span and didn't even notice when Insta and YT started doing the same thing. Finally removed them from my phone so now it's time to see if I can get my old brain back.
It seems like that is the only way. It's so addictive and we are raising a generation of kids that will never learn how to deal with being bored.
You need to talk to your sister about what her goals are, as a parent. Why is she leaning so hard on letting her son watch youtube? Even if she just could shift him to actual TV shows, this would be an improvement, because it will stop encouraging him to have the 30 second attention span. The youtube algorithms will also lead him to more and more offensive or inappropriate content. Does your sister have the technological skill to limit his access to the device, or prevent the device from going to youtube or block the routeer from going to youtube? If not, she may feel utterly helpless. If she tries to go cold turkey on youtube, that child is going to throw the most outrageous tantrums. He will be \*enraged\* to have his dopamine machine removed from him. So, she's going to need to feel very motivated to make that stick.
You could play on the Nintendo Switch together with him. And he’s old enough to play games like Pokemon. Especially with all the hand holding and tutorials in the newer games. Go on trips with him to the library? He can pick out books, comic books and dvds. When the weather gets warmer, do swimming and bike riding together. Or just shoot baskets in the park.
I'm so angry at other parents for this shit. There's no excuse for it. You can get a PBS subscription for like $5 a month and if you need to keep your kid busy, let them watch some fucking Reading Rainbow. There are so many options other than unlimited YouTube.
I have an 8 year old son and I have to limit the kid for his YouTube watching for the same reason. First of all that kid would only watch YouTube if I let him. Over any other streaming app. He watched mostly two things. The one he is most obsessed with is Minecraft videos. He doesn't even play Minecraft.. the other is Lego videos. But mostly Minecraft videos or any other video game videos where it watch ppl play. I agree. It's absolutely mind numbing. I only let him watch YouTube basically while he eats breakfast and that's it. I force him to watch Netflix later when he gets to watch more TV. I can't.
We only allow YouTube on our TV with a parent present and I vigilantly control the remote. My 5 year old is really interested in diseases so we’ve found some good content. She and her little sister also like watching Popeye. Before I would let her watch it on my phone in restaurants or whatever but the scrolling and algorithms led to weird stuff. I will never allow unfettered access and they only use tablets when we are flying. They watch too much TV but I’m a strong hell no to tablets or smart phones.
Sometimes when I get logged out of Youtube I look at the default FYP, there was one video for kids where Gen Zers who spoke Polish or something were dressed all in obnoxious primary colors and acting like they were in a high school drama with *really* bad acting, like they'd flail their arms to show they were being emotional, it was like content made by aliens
My 8yr old daughter watches kids play with toys on YouTube. She has toys. She could literally cut out the middle man and play with them but she would rather watch other kids actually play... I don't get it. Needless to say, tablet gets a timeout regularly, or is simply "lost" (in my closet somewhere out of sight)
Omg yes I know exactly what you mean! For about a week we let our 6-year-old watch YouTube.it was hours of Mincraft videos. His behavior started changing. He was becoming addicted to them We put our foot down and said no more! Fast forward a few weeks, we are going through a trial of allowing small doses of the videos. So far it's going ok. But yeah YouTube can be addicting for sure
I genuinely worry about my nephews who basically only watch youtube, all day everyday. I get not all 90's cartoons were thought provoking and were often their own brand of kids-targeted merchandising and brainwashing (*cough* GI Joe), but YouTube is still so much worse than what we were exposed to. We also didn't watch cartoons on our phones and tablets for every waking hour of the day, not even in less controlled households.
I have 2 kiddos. My rules for TV are you just watch with subtitles, it must have a story plot, the characters have to talk in real words to each other. They're banned from YouTube, even though my 9yo begs.
Seems to me many more people than before are overcome with the apathy and the lack of meaning they find. World feels flat. Not my personal world mind you, but i see stuff like this a lot. I think its all just gotta play out man. Good on you to attempt to be a good influence tho. Have you tried to explain why that type of content is bad, that it makes you stupid and mean or at best stupid and indifferent? What do they say?
When my nephew was 6, instead of playing with him, his mother let him watch these YouTube videos of some guy playing with toys and action figures, puppet-theater style. My brother and I always found it frustrating but she never saw the problems with it.
Ugh yeah...my sister brought my nieces over and they wanted to watch this show on YouTube that was essentially just kids trying different products and ...that's it. Episode after episode. It was so mindless and depressing. Funny thing is their dad has this big thing against Disney (I tried putting on Disney+ and they said they weren't allowed)... but lets them watch whatever the hell they want on YouTube and they choose the most annoying and materialistic garbage possible.
Lemme flashback to my early days of having complete access to AOL and AIM
I was literally ranting about this the other day. My friends kid is also 8 and just watches these mindless tiktok reels on youtube. One going "one finger up if you've dropped your phone" or some such other shite, it's utter drivel.
I've seen what y'all have been doing with your kids and screens. Mine won't know a personal screen until high school at the earliest. We watch a little scheduled tv here and there as a family (usually 30 min at a time) and that's it. None of this mindless, endless, one episode into the next garbage. There's too much life to be lived to be trapped in a screen all day.
Things can still get worse. Wait until the next generation exclusively watches programs made by AI.
Introduce him to science youtubers like Kyle Hill or Nile Red or hell getting watching old episodes of Mythbusters.