You choose Youtube?
I love Youtube. But, Youtube has an impossible problem. 300 hours of content is uploaded every minute. EVERY MINUTE. Yes, even The Dad Regime Podcast is now available on Youtube. It’s no surprise that stories like this are common.
What’s a parent to do? Follow these simple steps:
Children shouldn’t be watching Youtube unsupervised.
That’s where the list stops. You know I don’t usually talk in such absolutes.
I think many of us have forgotten that Youtube is not a commercial TV network that adheres to broadcasting standards. In very many ways it’s still the wild, wild west of content distribution. In a time when media is so available to us in so many ways, why are we choosing to allow children to click through millions of hours of unsolicited and unreviewed videos? It’s Russian roulette.
‘Stop judging me,’ I hear from the back row, ‘I let my kids watch cartoons, there’s nothing wrong with cartoons, you’re just being alarmist!’
Yes, I’m sure the Russian pirate who ripped the DVDs that your child is enjoying at the risk of the copyright infringement appreciates you patronising his monetised videos. And, yes, maybe the cartoons are harmless – until they have suicide instructions spliced into them.
And I’m sorry, but YoutubeKids is still Youtube. Still the same problem.
I love Youtube. I barely watch commercial TV. I barely watch subscription TV, either. I watch Youtube. Sometimes my son does too - with me. And we watch videos from content creators that I know and trust. No clicking, no random recommendations.
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