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My son is still young, almost 8, so I'm speaking for near that age level. He doesn't get unrestricted access to YouTube. If he's watching YouTube, it's with one of us present and helping him navigate it. He always wants to watch the video that's the lowest quality shit just based on the thumbnail, because they have thumbnails that stick out. I've taught him about "low quality" content and we've watched a couple so he could understand what I meant. Now, when he wants to watch something like that, I say "no, that's going to be low quality," he seems to understand and we move on to find something else.
Eventually, I'm going to let him navigate YouTube alone sometimes, and then go back and look at his watch history to see how things are going. He doesn't know watch history is a thing, nor will I ever tell him. If things go off the rails, we will guide them back to the rails slowly and nonjudgmentally
That said, we were at a restaurant the other day and a woman was there with her baby and a friend. She set that infant in a high chair with AI slop on her phone right in its face. The kid definitely didn't disturb her conversation, because it looked like a zombie. Godspeed, child
Remember that watch history has the largest impact on what recommended videos will appear in his feed.
Curating the watch history is insanely effective, I have done it for a decade and it has helped me keep my feed 92% politics free, and 98% toxic masculinity free, I never knew about Tate until I started seeing reddit posts about what a terrible person he is.
I would actually show him this when he is old enough.
My strategy about this was to remove any content I don't specifically want recommendations from, but has shifted to a more permissive stance where I will focus on removing videos that specifically harms my recommendations.
Definitely the case! I'm not always on top of this myself, but I do go in and remove anything that may poison my recommendations. At this point, I just get plants, history, and a splash of comedy. Thank you for bringing this to the fore!
If you dig comedy I've got a couple for you; AJ Wilkerson and Benny Feldman
Top tier comedians
Honestly never thought about how I would teach my (hypothetical, future) kid this stuff. I have the benefit of a decade of experience learning how youtube works and living through the clickbait endemic.
I guess that's why it's so important for parents to navigate YouTube together with them. My first experience of YT was also watching cool stuff like VSauce and Lego animations with my family.
Sometimes you see toddlers who are just playing blaring loud noises from tablets at restaurants. You also see adults&teenagers doing that on trains... I guess I would point them out to my kid afterwards and say "that's what happens when you watch too mcuh brainrot!"
There's an add-on by the same guy who makes sponsorbock that replaces thumbnails (and video tittles) for more more accurate ones, maybe you want to try that.
(Disclaimer: The add-on itself is free software (as in freedom) but the developer added the restriction that after one hour trial you can either pay or wait 24h and then you can use it without restriction. It's an interesting model.)
This is good parenting. You can't always be there to guide them or restrict them, nor should you want to be. You instead help them understand how to navigate the world themselves smartly. This is true for anything, not just what they see on the internet.
Found the part most parents struggle with!
This should be illegal, because it is harming the child. It should be viewed the same as giving it alcohol to keep it quiet.
I'm going for the hail mary pass and taking the stance that we need to send our youth back down into the mines.
We do already, it's called Minecraft.
They yearn for it!
I'm yet to encounter this really, my kids (twins) are only 2. However, this is the answer as I understand it - limit access in terms of time and content, and relax those limitations as appropriate.
That said, I'm going to struggle. Everyone needs to find the right balance for their own home, but I suspect I will lean more towards allowing less access to more curated content than most parents. I just can't abide the kind of brain rotting content that's available. I can't stand advertising of any kind. I know this will make me unpopular - or less "cool" than other parents, but I'm hoping that I can make up for it in other ways.
PBS Kids is a great option for littles! Free, no commercials, and supportive of social/emotional development (Reminder to set up a monthly donation to your local PBS station!). With the PBS Kids app, we'd often download a few episodes of something like Daniel Tiger or Wild Kratts for road trips
We rarely watch YouTube together, most of the time he's watching a series of some kind through Netflix or Paramount. Trollhunters, Gravity Falls, Henry Danger, stuff like that. His only exposure to commercials is during football games, whereas I can still sing over 100 jingles from my childhood.
It's still always better to limit/avoid screentime...
Yeah this is going to be part of my strategy.
Increased availability of better quality content, less reliance on algorithms serving up the next thing.
Damn good answer. Proud of you
Look into DeArrow (by same creators of SponsorBlock), which offers crowdsourced "de-clickbaited" video titles and thumbnails.
While it's nice to just avoid the clickbait while enjoying potentially genuinely good videos, I ended up uninstalling the extension. I want to explicitly avoid clickbait, and focus on encouraging and supporting creators that don't use it. Also, if I end up unknowingly interacting with too many clickbait-y videos, I worry the algorithm will push me more of that.
Unfortunately this is an increasingly unviable strategy, because even "good" creators have started using clickbaity titles and thumbnails, even if their content has remained the same. Some have even retroactively changed the titles/thumbnails of their older videos to this style.
Clickbait is engineered by behavioural scientists to be as addictive as possible, and has been proven to trigger similar neural pathways to other addictions, such as drug or gambling.
Basically every creator with a shred of self awareness has admitted that they hate creating clickbait thumbnails, titles, and phrases like smash that like button and subscribe; they end up doing it anyway because A/B testing with randomised thumbnails and titles clearly show that they work.
The live A/B testing in particular obscures whether a creator employs clickbait or not - you may be under the impression that a certain creator has remained principled, when in reality you were just allocated to the control group by chance.
I feel that it's one of those situations where the game is rigged, and the only way to "win" is to change the rules yourself.
Unpopular opinion: I have a second phone logged into my kid's YT account. I train the algorithm while he's sleeping.
It takes a significant time, and YouTube doesn't have good options for blocking content, but it helps keep out the worst of the brainrot.
I'm not sure whether to be scared or impressed by that. Both, I guess.
So, basically a future "people of walmart" 20 years before it happens. So like an orgin story for idiocy.