I’m officially done with YouTube Kids

The details are vague, but I think my husband and I downloaded the YouTube Kids app on our TV sometime in 2022 when one to three members of the household came down with the flu at the same time. Like countless parents of kids before us, we needed something that could give us a moment to vomit in peace. It worked, but it was the beginning of a fraught relationship – which I finally ended years later by banishing YouTube Kids from every screen in our house that was ever dark.

We initially let our son, Lennox, roam freely through the app, relying on the content filters and the wide assortment of “suitable for preschoolers.” She found some cute and harmless things that way. Truck tunes are catchy, and they are derby derbyA live-action show featuring some slightly goofy RC cars that kind of reminds me of Mystery Science TheaterBut we kept getting stuck in weird algorithmic cul-de-sacs, There are countless computer-generated cartoons in which trucks go down ramps and land in different pots of paint, apparently to help young children learn different colors, There are infinite variations on this: monster trucks, sharks, school buses, airplanes, you name it,

Then there’s a whole genre of videos where grown people, mostly off-screen, unbox and play with giant sets of toys. Of course, Blippi and Blippi are imitators, roaming around indoor playgrounds under the guise of teaching children something? And somehow we ended up recording farming simulator games that I didn’t even know why they were on YouTube Kids, let alone why. This was all getting really weird, so I dug around in the settings.

YouTube Kids offers a fair amount of parental controls. You can limit it to only whitelist channels, set a time limit for each session, and block channels you don’t like. To the app’s credit, I’ve never seen a completely inappropriate video. But the platform has slope problems; Even some of the things that earn space under the “academic” tab are questionable. Cowboy Jack, who is touring the Cybertruck in the Tesla showroom, follows which principle of childhood education? Unclear. I don’t want every children’s entertainer to become Mister Rogers, but I do question the value of a trip to a car dealership under the guise of “education.” Unless you’ve gone to the trouble of whitelisting just your favorite channels, this kind of thing pops up in recommendations and as attractive thumbnails with the player when the current video ends.

Eventually I whitelisted a handful of channels that I found tolerable, but even in this small pool of pre-approved content, somehow the strangest, most obnoxious content came to the surface. Watched a few episodes of a show called Lennox supercar On repeat, what seemed harmless enough at first. After the 10th re-watch of “The Stinky Car”, I couldn’t watch any more. The dialogue seemed like it was poorly translated into English, the plots made no sense, and most of all, it just annoyed me. We established a long hiatus from the stage.

Eventually that became permanent when I deleted the app completely.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about why I dislike YouTube Kids so much, and I suspect one reason is how hard it is to understand. Who It’s making stuff. supercar It is copyrighted by a company called Lefun Entertainment, which calls itself “the world’s favorite children’s content brand.” There’s no reference to its parent company on its bare-bones website, but a related YouTube channel called Lefun Kids TV lists an email address for a Chinese brand called Beilehu, which is owned by Shanghai-based Leking Network Technology. So my kid is watching Chinese cartoons about talking cars with English translations – okay. I just want to learn it without having to google it for 30 minutes!

What I find most uncomfortable is that these videos are designed to grab and hold kids’ attention for as long as possible – at the lowest possible cost to the content creator. Simple computer-generated animations, the same recycled stock music, calls to action at the end to watch more videos (I swear to God, if I hear “Just search my name! BLI, PPI!” one more time). I also don’t find the ads particularly problematic; We don’t pay for premiums, that would eliminate them, but an ad for a doll at the beginning of a 30 minute video is pretty ineffective. Rather, it’s the strategy of keeping kids glued to the channel that rubs me the wrong way. Paying for a premium won’t make the content any less obnoxious.

And look, I realized this is pure capitalism. Not that the Walt Disney Company is a non-profit organization, but at least it doesn’t feel like the company is directly soliciting my children’s attention. The subscription model helps, but even in the Disney clips on YouTube Kids, I never hear Mickey Mouse end the video telling kids how to type their name into a search engine.

After a long break, we’ve resumed some screentime at home, limited to Disney Plus and Prime Video for the kids. I have even started payment of Like for the season of the show derby derby On Prime to avoid YouTube Kids. In fact, the YouTube Kids app for our smart TVs no longer exists; It was absorbed by the main YouTube app a few years ago. The experience is essentially the same; You choose your kids’ profile when you open the app to get there, but it strikes me as a little odd that the kids’ stuff is so similar to everything else on YouTube – even if the dedicated app was just a filter.

And look, if I could turn back the clock and tell my kid that there’s only one channel on TV and that’s PBS Kids, I would do it. He may be unaware that a tablet can run anything other than adorable Sago mini games and a calculator, let alone streaming video services. But the cat is out of the bag, Pandora’s iPad is open, and truth be told, our little family needs those moments spent watching cartoons to help them breathe. Lately, it means a lot paw Patrol And whatever Disney’s version of “construction dog.” Is this any better for my child than what he was watching on YouTube? Perhaps. Perhaps. At least, I won’t have to listen to “Stinky Car” anymore – and that’s priceless.