Well I'm mostly thinking about how my teachers would make us watch a YT vid with a classwork/homework assignment. CrashCourse does like every subject, I watched several of their Civics & Government/History videos. Amoeba Sisters was a frequent channel in my Biology class.

But the whole point is you have to look for those, cause YT knows they can get way more kids to scroll and watch ads for 5 hrs+ if you show them "ElSa pOoPiNg oN SpIDeRmAn!1!1?!?1?" videos compared to “Learn about how carbon affects the pH of seawater!". The algorithm is designed to trap unfortunately, and YT kids is a fucking sham.

i let my kids use YouTube kids right now, and what I've found is that the kids algo is way more targeted and sensitive to changes than the normal one. if you go find 2 educational videos via search and watch them all the way through it will serve you nothing but those for days, but if you watch 2 slop videos the same thing applies. so, as with most things, parental supervision is the only way it works, but with that oversight it works great.

Honestly their algorithm seems to mostly push low quality, South Asian, and/or AI generated content lately, when randomly playing off of something like Ms Rachel or Sesame Street. Nothing disgusting, although maybe a little trippy (in AI case). My daughter really digs the Bollywood inspired kids stuff though.

Yeah, I mean we do sometimes watch YouTube videos together when they ask about a certain topic. I can see how if you only allowed them to use it supervised it could be a valuable thing. But it's tough to keep it only supervised. When my son had it, it ended up being just blippy and Minecraft videos. Not terrible stuff but not stuff I want him spending an hour a day on either.

Yeah I mean if a parent was always curing the content, it could be useful. But to me that's the same as not letting them have it, you just put on some YouTube videos every so often for them that you choose on your device (we do this now, I just don't allow it on their devices).

When we first let the kids watch YouTube it was on the main TV with it's own account. We have consistently monitored it and actively prune recommendations while slowly introducing them to the concept of "the algorithm". From secondary school they pretty much need YouTube on their own PC's for homework reasons and it's harder to totally lock down - we use the family link controls to limit it a little but if they tried to get around them they could. The hope is we've at least prepared them a little before they have totally unfettered access to the internet.

We did try YouTube kids a little but it was such a garbage experience we just blocked the app everywhere.

Make a new account and see what the suggestions turn into.

This panic again? This shit is weird at best

Parents: don’t let your babies on the Interwebs.

YouTube’s Deliberate Indifference Exposes Anyone to disgusting Content

FTFY

Try using a free online YouTube ripper. You rip the video you need while still denying the kiddos junk tube.

I thought my youngest was all about watching hour long Minecraft playthroughs but really they are quite interested in game mechanics and speed running. They are just a lot more tolerant of watching hours of videos around a particular game.

I don't overly police their content consumption (although we do talk about limiting shorts). The main thing is at the weekend to kick them off the TV after the morning to go and do something more interactive.

Sure if they needed to bypass ads I can introduce them to Free tube or whatever but for all it's sins they need moderated exposure to the YouTube experience so they're equipped enough not to go totally wild when they finally have unfettered access.

The stuff he was watching was more "am I gonna catch Mikey? Mikey is a chicken" kind of stuff. If he was really learning about the mechanics and how to program stuff in Minecraft with redstone or something, I could get behind it. I know Minecraft well enough to know the junk from the good stuff. And he watched probably 10 videos like this every day for more than a year, so I think from those thousands of videos he's learned whatever he would have learned already.

Now instead he is mostly watching chess videos and playing on an app called ChessKid which I'm much more happy with.