Today on HN there was an interesting discussion on addictive apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004
In essence you have parents vs the best funded organizations in the world, packed with PhDs working full time to grab all our attention, children being the most susceptible. The only advantage parents is physical proximity. Disadvantages include lack of time, knowledge, awareness etc. I'm not betting on parents winning
Yes, it's up to the parents. But unless you have time to pre-screen every minute of content your kids watch (hint: if you have a job, you don't have time to do this), at some point you have to trust a ratings agency like MPAA, ESRB, or a company like Google when they say - "this content here, it's safe for kids". The obvious problem is that YouTube Kids is utterly failing at this.
What's the realistic alternative? Watching hours upon hours of kids content on YouTube and creating your own playlists? How do you stop a child from going to a "recommended video" afterwards? What about ad content, how do you filter that?
Edit: The only realistic alternative is not letting kids watch YouTube. This is fine, but then maybe Google should not be advertising a section of YouTube as "for kids".
And even then, things get pretty sexual.
I would argue that if your kids are watching so much of this stuff that you don't have time to monitor it, they're watching way too much of it. "Hours upon hours" is definitely way too much.
Your kids will survive even if they're not plugged in to streaming media 24/7/365. Really.
It never ceases to amaze that the kind of psychological engineering these companies engage in is outside the bounds of any established ethics, but somehow they escape unscathed because money.
I've been confused reading all these stories about YT Kids, how do the kids even get to this stuff? The obvious search terms are banned by the app, but how deep down the rabbit hole does one have to go?
This garbage on YouTube Kids is aimed at getting children to watch it and intended to be disturbing to children. The titles say things like "educational, learn numbers" and the channels are called stuff like "Kids TV."
Yes, and any sane parent would agree. Physical safety is a prime consideration.
Here's a bunch of examples (query: fork in electrical outlet):
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fork+in+electri...
(Come to think of it, college is when you really have to worry about your kids frying themselves because they saw something cool on the Internet. At that point, you've let your guard down and assume you don't need to babyproof. But I distinctly remember being sad that I'd missed the exploding wires demonstration in physics class and deciding to replicate it myself with a frayed Ethernet cable in my dorm room...that could've gone very badly. And my friend electrocuted himself trying to get pirated satellite with a board he'd bought off the Internet and a dish we self-installed on the dorm roof.)
PTSD from seeing horror movies at the age of 2.
Sexually precocious behavior at 6 due to having seen hardcore pornography at the age of 3.
It's hard to tell what will or won't deeply affect a child and even harder to gauge the specific ages where things might become appropriate. It's really per-child, and no matter how well a parent does gauging that, mistakes will be made.
There's no way this can be automated, as it's never going to be one-size-fits-all. The combination of generally sanitized media channel + parental supervision will (and should) endure, IMO.
Yes. See the number of perforated ear drums after the "You've been tango'd" adverts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement)#Bro...
(the lead says the ad was banned; his section says it was voluntarily pulled. Either way it could have been banned: any system of media rating (eg advertising standards or BBFC) include imitatable violence.
And I don't think a parent's discomfort is sufficient, either. There were things that I watched as a child, with my parents' knowledge, that I still consider to have caused me trauma.
For some things, the potential hazards (in this case, lifelong desensitization to, or increased propensity to violence) so drastically exceed the potential benefits (in this case, a bit more profit and less work for Google), that we should proceed with the precautionary principle, rather than just saying "F-it, show em whatever, we don't yet have proof that it's bad".
Learn a bit of perspective.
I know it's the "think of the children" thing, but I hope Youtube sees the outrage about these spammy kids channels and does something so they aren't suggested and autoplayed. To me that's a special case. Grown adults who see fake news on Facebook and take it as the truth regularly.. Is that really on Facebook to fix that?
In the past few years, I've been learning intensely about communities and family: got married and learning to be a step-father. I am also involved in a legal-tech startup and got to hear how lawyers think about governance and law. I don't think social media is a substitute for community either, although it can be beneficial _if_ used within the context of community.
Here are some of the things I learned:
- There is a tension between global and local concerns. Neither alone can address everything. Local concerns -- communities -- have people living there. They have a stake in their local environment. There are issues when people outside of a community (people without stakes within the community, who are not residents) try to influence things. This could be anything from coordinating regional concerns (such as people building upscale neighborhoods in a flood control area built by the Army Corp of Engineers in Houston), or outside investors holding municipal bonds.
- I discovered Christopher Alexander's work on pattern languages and designs. I found his keynote to the OOPSLA '96 conference. His work inspired the design patterns of OOP as well as Human Interface Design, but I don't think his vision and philosophy was ever fully implemented. His life's work somehow addresses how to design for both global and local concerns. The idea is that architects develop pattern languages that will always result in cohesive, livable designs (global), and the actual users of that pattern language are the people who live within that community (local). Although this is primarily focused on building design, I think it has some overlap with governance. Physical environment will shape and influence how people interact with each other.
- There are people who are isolated because they don't fit with their local community's norm. Allowing them to connect with other people around the world is great. However, I think it is important for a person's psychological health to have some connection with their local neighbors.
- My wife and I tried allowing my step-daughter to have a smart phone, mainly so we can reach her in an emergency. She quickly found ways to become absorbed into it, neglecting her responsibilities to the family and our expectations for her as parents. We tried using more tech to restrict it. She got around them -- claims innocence (and to this day, I don't really know whether she was or not). In the end, we got her a flip phone. She called a "granny phone", and we blocked calls and texts at the carrier level. She doesn't have her own tablet or computer anymore: we have family devices that are kept in the family office and she is forbidden to take it in her room. (Where she still sometimes sneaks it to bed and stays up all night watching youtube videos).
- My wife told my daughter that she had to be at least 13 to get on social media, and she is forbidden from it. That was half a year ago. I had always wanted to get my daughter to _earn_ her smartphone (and by extension, social media) through some sort of modern-day rite of passage. But over the months, I am more and more inclined to forbid her from social media until she graduates high school.
There are thousands upon thousands of rendered, cartoon, and live-action videos featuring popular childrens characters like Spider-Man and Elsa that have extremely disturbing themes dealing with punishment, handcuffing/restraint, dismemberment, injections, bodily waste, etc. It seems like they get more and more unusual as autoplay goes on. As a parent they are extremely unnerving and I'll certainly never let young children watch youtube unattended and I warn every parent I know about them.
There are places for curated content and there are content bazaars. YouTube Autoplay is a bazaar. Facebook is a bazaar. Recognize where you are, the motivations of those putting things in front of you and your family, and act accordingly.