I have some pre-teen children that have access to an iPad, Xbox, and an Apple TV.
My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I never took it away, so they aren't missing it.
I've loaded up the iPad with fun age appropriate games and activities, that don't require any In-App purchases. If my kids want more apps, then Apple will ask my permission on my iPhone.
I use an Ubiquiti Dream Machine as my home router, so I have some basic content filtering and I have some categorisation of the traffic available, but nothing detailed.
In terms of video games, my recommendation is have a games console in the living room. They have access to video games, but they can play them where everyone can observe. They can have their own video games, this isn't a problem. Microsoft sends me a family report every week about what games were played, but I don't pay much attention to it. Purchases require parent approval on Xbox too.
With a 0.2 and 2 year old, you are somewhat lucky. The ages are close enough that they will play with each other a lot... and screen time won't be too much of an issue until they hit teenage years.
YouTube is really bad and hard to stop. When kids get curious about something on the fringe, the algorithm pushes them further and further into the rat hole until they are practically brainwashed by the craziest YouTubers. Unfortunately Google has chosen profit over allowing controls that are effective for parents.
My policy always was YouTube only allowed for searched content (or subscribed I suppose, cant do that without logging in though), no recommendations or other passive watching. Not really possible to implement in practice though. Disabling autoplay and such can only do so much, and the new “shorts” thing really threw a wrench into it.
Found a specialised safari content blocker that seems to block most of it though.
YouTube is horrible. They use it for school occasionally and so it would have to be available during that Covid year of online schooling. My wife actually noticed that around Feb of 2021, the algorithm had won. Our son was hooked.
‘How can a 6 year old boy compete with a bunch of engineers at Google?’ - wife
Since that time I have been playing with a YouTube app concept that only allows limited access and doesn’t auto play.
I don’t know that it is a full ‘solution’ but it does allow Science Max and Mystery Doug and other great content to learn from without all the negatives.
What about these alternative YT front ends that I can’t remember the names of? They’re all based on the same software but some people make their instances public.
There is no algorithm there, no ads, no auto play.
Is YouTube really so bad nowadays? I feel like I'm in a weird position as I'm young enough to have grown up with YouTube, having used it regularly since age 11 or 12, and I got a ton out of it, but "The Algorithm" wasn't a thing in the same way back then. I still use YouTube today and still get a lot out of it, but I mainly watch videos from channels I'm subscribed to or through direct recommendation by other people.
Am I living in a weird bubble while the rest of the world experiences a parallel, much worse YouTube?
There’s plenty of quality content on YouTube. But there’s plenty of low quality knockoffs, and even outright dangerous videos like Blippi smashing things with hammers or Peppa Pig murdering her friends and family with a knife.
YouTube has too much crowd generated garbage to leave kids unsupervised.
Yes. The recommendations that are pushed to me are wildly different than what my kids see.
Mine are mostly DIY fix-your-shit videos and boring science stuff I assume it puts there because I'm old and boring.
Most of my kids' recs are the cult-of-personality YouTubers who gain popularity with innocuous unboxing videos and game streaming that attract underage audiences attracted to colors and theatrics, and over time devolve into progressively toxic "lolcow" or sexually-predatory behavior that makes the denizens of 8chan look tame.
That much, in addition to the sometimes-fatal "challenges" these clowns try to promote (though that's a TikTok thing too) and the "accidents" involving exposing audiences of children to incidental pornography.
These people used to be kept in check by ratings boards and the stations held liable by the FCC for what they broadcast to audiences. YouTube has no accountability whatsoever; you are entrusting your children's television programming to self-publishing internet trolls.
There is a big trend of odd videos that no adult can seem to understand. My 4-year old loves them. They star familiar characters like Mario, pac-man, siren head, huggy wuggy, etc. they use sampled sound effects repeated ad naseum. There is no plot or story that lasts more than maybe 10 seconds, but the videos can be 30 minutes. Sometimes there’s no plot or story at all.
Yeah, I'm probably around your age. I remember YouTube being great circa 2011 ish, I started getting into Minecraft mods and from that programming because of it.
Now, in 2022 I've been YouTube short (and TikTok) free for a month or so and I consider that an accomplishment lol.
The problem I feel is mindful browsing vs doomscrolling.
A lot of platforms nowadays have gotten really good at promoting mindless content with zero required attention span that's just a dopamine injection. IMO that kind of content is just objectively bad. Then again, I also follow a lot of people on YouTube and other platforms that make content that I would say is the opposite of that.
Great tips. Agree with the youtube vision you have. How do you deal with banning youtube all together? It's even on the smart tv menu. It's like playin whack a mole.
What we should be doing as a sort of collective parenting is curating Youtube playlists and categorize them with good, informational, fun and inspiring videos. Then we limit the children's access to that curated material only.
It's always a cat and mouse game, and was when we were kids too.
You can (in order of simplicity):
* Get a list of common VPN provider domains and block in DNS
* Block all traffic to common DNS ports
* Use various filtering/monitoring applications to categorise traffic and look for odd outliers (probably VPNs)
* Force proxy only access and MITM sniff traffic
Of course the most important thing to do is discuss consequences and bring up why it's hurtful for him to lie to you via his actions. But the above technical solutions will cover 95% of what most kids can do... Until they can get a mobile data connection.
My #1 recommendation is NO YOUTUBE, unless it's for education purposes. I don't have the App installed on any of my kids devices (they can access it via the website, but they don't do that). It's just a cesspool of garbage for kids. Even YouTube Kids is bad. Occasionally, they will complain about not having the YouTube app... but I never took it away, so they aren't missing it.
I've loaded up the iPad with fun age appropriate games and activities, that don't require any In-App purchases. If my kids want more apps, then Apple will ask my permission on my iPhone.
I use an Ubiquiti Dream Machine as my home router, so I have some basic content filtering and I have some categorisation of the traffic available, but nothing detailed.
In terms of video games, my recommendation is have a games console in the living room. They have access to video games, but they can play them where everyone can observe. They can have their own video games, this isn't a problem. Microsoft sends me a family report every week about what games were played, but I don't pay much attention to it. Purchases require parent approval on Xbox too.
With a 0.2 and 2 year old, you are somewhat lucky. The ages are close enough that they will play with each other a lot... and screen time won't be too much of an issue until they hit teenage years.
Good luck.