Even if you don’t want to block YouTube for your whole house at the router level, there’s a way to block it on the system level on individual devices. My techie H has done this in the past.
My tangent question is - How does this work when they need to watch YouTube videos for school?
My younger kids are still very young (4 and 2), so they don’t have access to personal screens/iPads except for plane rides right now - it’s irrelevant. But when we went through this many years ago with my now-18 year old, blocking YouTube was impossible because starting in 6th grade/middle school she always “needed to watch some YouTube video for homework” (we checked Schoology, it was legit). But of course once she was on there watching YouTube “for homework,” it quickly spiraled into a bunch of awful, inappropriate garbage.
I’d really love it if YouTube videos didn’t have to be homework at all - but since I don’t really see that going away, my second wish would be for some sort of “academic” YouTube separate and apart from regular YouTube because I too would love to block YouTube - at least during the elementary/early middle school years.
So far no school assignment has required access to YouTube. I can watch YouTube on my phone if I disconnect it from the WiFi so in the future I’d probably do something similar.
When does this start generally? DS is about to turn 7 and has never mentioned You Tube to me. He has a Kindle Fire but he’s not super into it (uses it on road trips mostly). He asked for a video game console but we haven’t given in and he isn’t very persistent. We’re pretty loose with TV screen time (he watches Netflix in the mornings for a couple hours on weekends). I’m curious when you all noticed the transition to wanting this kind of access so I’m prepared lol.
However, he plays games with his friends over FaceTime on the weekend quite a bit. He plays Minecraft and Roblox, and then Wario/Mario
FYSA, it’s possible for him to watch YouTube videos over FaceTime if the person he’s FaceTiming is watching and shares their screen. Just something to keep an eye on. We caught C doing this to get around the YouTube time limits we set and to watch his friends play Fortnite (which we don’t allow him to play at all).
Post by sillygoosegirl on Oct 14, 2023 19:35:38 GMT -5
We don't allow YouTube, largely because of junk content. I mean, I'm slightly concerned about problematic content (like tide pods, extremists, etc), but really mostly I'm concerned about the ads and general junk. I know there's good content on YouTube too, but until YouTube gives me a way to sort it, it's a big no for us. Occassionally there's a reason for it, but it's on my PC or DH's PC, which are always locked when we aren't right there (also use them for work and so we have to keep them locked).
At this point I wish she would develop more interest in video games, since a lot of them involve hand-eye coordination that she could really benefit from working on...
Even if you don’t want to block YouTube for your whole house at the router level, there’s a way to block it on the system level on individual devices. My techie H has done this in the past.
My tangent question is - How does this work when they need to watch YouTube videos for school?
My younger kids are still very young (4 and 2), so they don’t have access to personal screens/iPads except for plane rides right now - it’s irrelevant. But when we went through this many years ago with my now-18 year old, blocking YouTube was impossible because starting in 6th grade/middle school she always “needed to watch some YouTube video for homework” (we checked Schoology, it was legit). But of course once she was on there watching YouTube “for homework,” it quickly spiraled into a bunch of awful, inappropriate garbage.
I’d really love it if YouTube videos didn’t have to be homework at all - but since I don’t really see that going away, my second wish would be for some sort of “academic” YouTube separate and apart from regular YouTube because I too would love to block YouTube - at least during the elementary/early middle school years.
So far no school assignment has required access to YouTube. I can watch YouTube on my phone if I disconnect it from the WiFi so in the future I’d probably do something similar.
Fair enough, but I also don’t want to pull out my personal phone and hand it over every time my future 5th/6th grader needs to watch a YouTube link for homework. Sigh.
My rant about schools moving to virtually all online homework, and how it’s just created a mountain’s worth more work for parents to monitor/enforce/track online activity and screen usage, is probably best served for another thread. I’m not a complete Luddite about technology but there has to be a better way.
We took YouTube apps off the screens they have access to because they were the same way. All they wanted to watch was YouTubers playing pranks or yelling at each other while they do things like fill a pool with orbees or play Minecraft. Then they found Unspeakable on the Roku somehow anyway.
We have recently started really reducing screen time because we felt like their addiction to immediately wanting to turn on the TV the minute they walk in the door and their not responding to us when we talk to them until we’ve said something more than once while screens were on was getting out of control. I actually love it. Why didn’t we do this sooner?
I’m guessing this is why my ds 9 and dd 7 keep hounding us for an ipad. I think the only junk internet they get is the time on my iPhone playing free games they downloaded while waiting for each others’ piano lessons to finish.
Ds has a switch and plays on weekends. He sets a timer. Sometimes we give extra time when he plays with his sister. Otherwise screen time is communal - movie nights, reruns of full house and the simpsons, baking shows. Ditto the activity comment too. They’re in a lot of stuff and we have a pretty active neighborhood full of kids playing outside and no screens.
I was thinking of getting an iPad for the kids to share for Christmas but this thread is making second guess that…. I guess it’s best to try and regulate the behavior bc they’ll all be teenagers with phones eventually.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
But I guess I’m in the minority of wanting to teach internet safety vs removal of the opportunity. 🤷🏼♀️
I use YouTube a lot with my silhouette. I’m a hobbyist with it and am thankful there are tutorials out there. And watching a video on the computer is better than my phone when it’s a 12x12 design.
During Covid we did a lot with her rainbow loom. I liked that we could setup the kindle and have a video for making a cupcake ring or learning a new way to weave the elastics.
But my kid is 10 and will be in middle. I am in the season of internet education for her. It’s even something they go over in school with what websites are legit for research vs not.
However, he plays games with his friends over FaceTime on the weekend quite a bit. He plays Minecraft and Roblox, and then Wario/Mario
FYSA, it’s possible for him to watch YouTube videos over FaceTime if the person he’s FaceTiming is watching and shares their screen. Just something to keep an eye on. We caught C doing this to get around the YouTube time limits we set and to watch his friends play Fortnite (which we don’t allow him to play at all).
Good point!
He always plays next to us, so I hope I’d catch it if they did.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
But I guess I’m in the minority of wanting to teach internet safety vs removal of the opportunity. 🤷🏼♀️
I use YouTube a lot with my silhouette. I’m a hobbyist with it and am thankful there are tutorials out there. And watching a video on the computer is better than my phone when it’s a 12x12 design.
During Covid we did a lot with her rainbow loom. I liked that we could setup the kindle and have a video for making a cupcake ring or learning a new way to weave the elastics.
But my kid is 10 and will be in middle. I am in the season of internet education for her. It’s even something they go over in school with what websites are legit for research vs not.
You can teach internet safety and recognize that some sites are, overall, not safe for kids.
If my 10 year old son wants to watch a video on YouTube, we do it together. If I want my HS students to reference a video on balancing redox reactions, I have the video/link unblocked on their school computers.
When I taught virtually during Covid and I needed the kids to watch something on YouTube, there are a couple different sites that you can put the link into and it removes the ads and only shows the clip. I’ve used those sites ever since with my classes because YouTube isn’t blocked. I imagine that would be a pain in the ass for parents to do with their kids HW, though.
All my kids do watch some YouTube kids, which I’m not a fan of, but they have pretty active lives between school, activities, playing outside with friends, etc, so I let them have some time to do whatever they want in the evenings. They watch some weird stuff, but nothing too bad in my opinion.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
But I guess I’m in the minority of wanting to teach internet safety vs removal of the opportunity. 🤷🏼♀️
I use YouTube a lot with my silhouette. I’m a hobbyist with it and am thankful there are tutorials out there. And watching a video on the computer is better than my phone when it’s a 12x12 design.
During Covid we did a lot with her rainbow loom. I liked that we could setup the kindle and have a video for making a cupcake ring or learning a new way to weave the elastics.
But my kid is 10 and will be in middle. I am in the season of internet education for her. It’s even something they go over in school with what websites are legit for research vs not.
You can teach internet safety and recognize that some sites are, overall, not safe for kids.
If my 10 year old son wants to watch a video on YouTube, we do it together. If I want my HS students to reference a video on balancing redox reactions, I have the video/link unblocked on their school computers.
I never said that I didn’t realize some sites aren’t safe? I said that YouTube and other internet sites have a time and a place.
You can teach internet safety and recognize that some sites are, overall, not safe for kids.
If my 10 year old son wants to watch a video on YouTube, we do it together. If I want my HS students to reference a video on balancing redox reactions, I have the video/link unblocked on their school computers.
I never said that I didn’t realize some sites aren’t safe? I said that YouTube and other internet sites have a time and a place.
You seem defensive. Why the shrug? Like Jalapeñomel said you can teach internet safety and limit access to you tube or other sites. You said internet safety vs removal and it doesn’t have to be a vs. It can be both.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
If you’re an Apple user, you can set up parental controls to block YouTube.com as a website so it can’t be accessed even in the browser.
Or, just take Safari off the iPad/device entirely if you want to eliminate any web browsing (this is what we did with my kids’ iPads).
ETA - I recognize YouTube isn’t all garbage and that there is plenty of useful/educational stuff on there. But the problem is that there’s no way to easily filter what’s fine and what’s not, and so I will not be giving either of my younger kids unfettered access to YouTube for a long, long time. It’s easier to just block it entirely, and if there’s some particular video they want to watch, I will watch it on my device with them.
I say this as someone who watched my SD go down some absolutely sick/awful YouTube rabbit holes in middle school (once she “needed YouTube for school”). Same with Tumblr, Reddit, etc. We walked a lot of stuff back but the damage had been done. We were super strict and didn’t even let her have a smartphone until 8th grade, but she had a school-issued Chromebook with an internet browser starting in 6th grade - which, again, was required to do virtually all of her homework - and that was all it took.
I'm not opposed to Youtube as a whole, H and I watch tutorials, and I have introduced DS (9) to science videos that my students also enjoy. We control screens by not allowing DS to have a personal device and always being in an open space. If he asks to watch a Youtube video it's on our living room tv where an adult is always in the vicinity (advantages of living in a small house). We have a Switch, also always played in our living room. He likes to connect with cousins for Mario Kart, but either H is playing with them or there is an adult on the other end so someone is monitoring it. Computer games are starting to be requested, but they are limited to things he can access from his teacher's website and only while I'm prepping dinner.
I'm a big fan of kids being bored. That's when their imaginations can work best. Read, draw, play, go outside! Just don't tell me you're bored or I'll find plenty of chores that need done.
I'm also okay walking back a previous parenting decision and making a completely different choice. I don't feel the need to give DS a huge explanation as to why I am changing my mind either. "This isn't working for our family, here is our new plan" is just fine. We used to allow select cartoons on Saturday morning so H and I could sleep in. It became increasingly difficult to get DS off the tv and start our day so we stopped. Now the screens are more of a reward after a day of activities.
We are the worst parents in the world according to my 11 year-old, but this is what we do. We limit YouTube to 15 minutes a day on our TV. She has no access to it on her device. It’s just so painfully bad, what she watches. I watch it with her but try not to dump on her choices. I might ask a question or two so she knows I’m paying attention. She will quickly switch away from a TikTok she can tell will be too raunchy or whatever. So I see it as a win; she knows there are standards and what crosses the line.
She gets two more hours of screen time a day and I don’t really care if the games she plays or the shows she watches are dumb. I just don’t want them to be violent, misogynistic, etc. I grew up watching Gilligan’s Island, General Hospital, and Hollywood Squares, and my brain survived.
By the time my older kiddo reached high school, I let them use media unsupervised.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
But I guess I’m in the minority of wanting to teach internet safety vs removal of the opportunity. 🤷🏼♀️
I use YouTube a lot with my silhouette. I’m a hobbyist with it and am thankful there are tutorials out there. And watching a video on the computer is better than my phone when it’s a 12x12 design.
During Covid we did a lot with her rainbow loom. I liked that we could setup the kindle and have a video for making a cupcake ring or learning a new way to weave the elastics.
But my kid is 10 and will be in middle. I am in the season of internet education for her. It’s even something they go over in school with what websites are legit for research vs not.
You can teach internet safety and recognize that some sites are, overall, not safe for kids.
If my 10 year old son wants to watch a video on YouTube, we do it together. If I want my HS students to reference a video on balancing redox reactions, I have the video/link unblocked on their school computers.
That’s just it. The implication that those of us who removed YouTube don’t want to teach safety is just bananas. There’s a lot of bad stuff out there and even the most vigilant parents can get duped.
Yeah, I mean there are several related but distinct issues here. Screen time, content quality (eg "educational" in some form), Internet safety, and Internet independence (ie learning to self-moderate time, quality, and safety). To me, the primary issue with YouTube specifically is Internet safety (I think our rules are fairly loose at this point on both screen time and quality).
I also don't think that letting my elementary age kid watch YouTube unsupervised is helpful in teaching Internet independence. Having those discussions is part of what we try to do WHILE watching YouTube only with a grown up.
We don't allow YouTube, largely because of junk content. I mean, I'm slightly concerned about problematic content (like tide pods, extremists, etc), but really mostly I'm concerned about the ads and general junk. I know there's good content on YouTube too, but until YouTube gives me a way to sort it, it's a big no for us. Occassionally there's a reason for it, but it's on my PC or DH's PC, which are always locked when we aren't right there (also use them for work and so we have to keep them locked).
At this point I wish she would develop more interest in video games, since a lot of them involve hand-eye coordination that she could really benefit from working on...
lol I feel this in my bones. The kids these days, they just want to watch video games! When I was your age, if I wanted to experience some goofy run through Zelda with ridiculous constraints, I had to do it myself! Or get together with friends and do it!
Yeah, I mean there are several related but distinct issues here. Screen time, content quality (eg "educational" in some form), Internet safety, and Internet independence (ie learning to self-moderate time, quality, and safety). To me, the primary issue with YouTube specifically is Internet safety (I think our rules are fairly loose at this point on both screen time and quality).
For YouTube specifically what's "unsafe" that's separate to "low quality"? I've been surprised at how little of the internet crank stuff (MRAs, cryptocurrency, anime avatar white supremacists (anime is great but what's up with those guys) we're getting so far. I guess the popular video game YouTubers are pretty wholesome, and even the "edgy" ones seem to be standard teenager edgy.
YouTube is mostly one-direction, if you stay out of the comments, it's not like Twitch chat etc.
For me, it's not so much a safety concern and more of an addiction to you tube and video games. I did notice some sexually suggestive stuff on You Tube on the Apple TV. Once we deleted that, we got rid of the algorithm even though You Tube was eventually added back to Apple TV. But as soon as the front page was opened, it was weird stuff, so I deleted it right then.
You can get YouTube from a browser. It comes up on searches. Deleting the app isn’t going to remove access.
If you’re an Apple user, you can set up parental controls to block YouTube.com as a website so it can’t be accessed even in the browser.
Or, just take Safari off the iPad/device entirely if you want to eliminate any web browsing (this is what we did with my kids’ iPads).
ETA - I recognize YouTube isn’t all garbage and that there is plenty of useful/educational stuff on there. But the problem is that there’s no way to easily filter what’s fine and what’s not, and so I will not be giving either of my younger kids unfettered access to YouTube for a long, long time. It’s easier to just block it entirely, and if there’s some particular video they want to watch, I will watch it on my device with them.
I say this as someone who watched my SD go down some absolutely sick/awful YouTube rabbit holes in middle school (once she “needed YouTube for school”). Same with Tumblr, Reddit, etc. We walked a lot of stuff back but the damage had been done. We were super strict and didn’t even let her have a smartphone until 8th grade, but she had a school-issued Chromebook with an internet browser starting in 6th grade - which, again, was required to do virtually all of her homework - and that was all it took.
DD (10) was watching make-up videos and it just makes me wonder if those kinds of things feed into beauty issues, body issues things like that, so I need to check this more.
Even if you don’t want to block YouTube for your whole house at the router level, there’s a way to block it on the system level on individual devices. My techie H has done this in the past.
My tangent question is - How does this work when they need to watch YouTube videos for school?
My younger kids are still very young (4 and 2), so they don’t have access to personal screens/iPads except for plane rides right now - it’s irrelevant. But when we went through this many years ago with my now-18 year old, blocking YouTube was impossible because starting in 6th grade/middle school she always “needed to watch some YouTube video for homework” (we checked Schoology, it was legit). But of course once she was on there watching YouTube “for homework,” it quickly spiraled into a bunch of awful, inappropriate garbage.
I’d really love it if YouTube videos didn’t have to be homework at all - but since I don’t really see that going away, my second wish would be for some sort of “academic” YouTube separate and apart from regular YouTube because I too would love to block YouTube - at least during the elementary/early middle school years.
I think I could watch you tube on my cell phone using cellular instead of WIFI if I blocked it on WIFI. I could be making that up, but it sounds plausible.
Yeah, I mean there are several related but distinct issues here. Screen time, content quality (eg "educational" in some form), Internet safety, and Internet independence (ie learning to self-moderate time, quality, and safety). To me, the primary issue with YouTube specifically is Internet safety (I think our rules are fairly loose at this point on both screen time and quality).
For YouTube specifically what's "unsafe" that's separate to "low quality"? I've been surprised at how little of the internet crank stuff (MRAs, cryptocurrency, anime avatar white supremacists (anime is great but what's up with those guys) we're getting so far. I guess the popular video game YouTubers are pretty wholesome, and even the "edgy" ones seem to be standard teenager edgy.
YouTube is mostly one-direction, if you stay out of the comments, it's not like Twitch chat etc.
As far as YouTube, we saw something where YouTube Kids auto played into a Disney satire video with rape themes. The algorithm is missing that human perspective and literally anyone can post literally anything on YouTube. Sure, 99% is going to be ok but the rest? Not interested in having my kids stumble into that. And then you say it's ok if you skip the comment section, but lots of creators encourage engagement in the comments to get an algorithm boost. I don't trust Internet comment sections even on kids content.
I basically don't let my kids interact with strangers on the Internet unsupervised. I had a young coworker who thought the "prank" to advise people to mix ammonia and bleach was hilarious. WTF.
There is plenty of stuff on other (moderated) platforms to keep my kids entertained without opening those cans of worms.