I was working in a house this week that had a ~4 year kid in another room. They were on the mums phone watching YouTube shorts and I think I had an aneurysm listening to it. It was godawful and the attention span was so low they constantly flicked through so most didn’t even play for more than a second or two of incomprehensible gibberish before they’d flicked onto the next one.
I feel really sorry for anyone who has to grow up surrounded by this bombardment of shite.
A 4yo has no business having unrestricted access to media, let alone YouTube. Current recommendations are 20 to 45 minutes a day at that age, depending on country / organization.
YouTube has so much questionable content, kids shouldn’t be in a position to be able to click next and consume that crap.
YouTube kids exists since 2015, but Elsagate happened around 2017/18, so I don’t exactly trust their content moderation.
Right, this is simple stuff - for a 4 year old, content of any kind must be curated, and I’d argue that stays true in different ways for quite a while.
Yeesh. Before ever turning over entire decision-making power on a very uncontrolled platform to a kid, ya gotta help walk them through stuff and spend time curating / selecting content together. And also wait for them to grow up some and demonstrate readiness.
And certainly never trust YouTube’s curation, ever, agreed.
4 yo rawdogging modern AI slop YouTube shorts, solo, is wild.
Giving internet connected devices to a kid is like giving them blank plane tickets and sending them alone to the airport !
Seriously dangerous! I like your analogy, it’s even a little worse though, it’s like doing that but also the planes have an engineered preference to steer towards the worst places.
I did not even think of it. It is worse than what I thought
Is that YouTube trying to compete with Tiktok for the no-attention-span brain rot market? I never saw the appeal.
Tbh YouTube is even worse.
I want my kid to watch YouTube in moderation, there are good content creators in there.
BUT there is no way for me to block their access to the brain rot shithole that is YouTube Shorts. None, zero, nada. No parental controls work.
With TikTok I can just block it completely with parental controls, no problems.
more like sloptube slops
This looks godawful
I’m a grown adult and I think those thumbnails are gonna give me nightmares holy shit
Caught my 7yo niece consuming disney princess cosplay ahegao content on youtube shorts yesterday. =\ she’s not allowed on YouTube anymore, the platform is too unsafe for children.
the platform was never safe, parents are just ignorant
