Banning YouTube has been the best parenting decision I’ve made recently.

[Cadela]

Dd only had kids YouTube but even with the approved channels I allowed her to watch for an hour max a day her behaviour has been so so so much better since I completely banned it.

It was rough for the first few days where she was having meltdowns about it. I just repeated sorry darling, but no YouTube. And it’s been 2 months now and she only speaks about it wistfully - “oh mum remember when you used to let me watch YouTube?”

Honestly if you’re on the fence it’s so so so worth it!! Dd has prime, Netflix and Disney plus and honestly whilst she’s in the house YouTube will never go back on. Best thing I’ve ever done.

My son watched YouTube probably when he was around 4 years old - I soon stopped that due to his behaviour and also even on YouTube kids there's creepy weird videos.
Now he's 6 and enjoys netflix and Disney plus only, as well as games on his tablet.

The difference is that anyone can upload any old shite to YouTube. And belive me, 95% of it is total crap.
Whereas "proper" content providers like Disney and Netflix actually pay professionals to make high quality, age appropriate programs for children. With the BBC of course being at the top of the quality pyramid.

I was one of those kids that wasn't allowed to do the same stuff as their peers. It's quite isolating. You can't join in the chat about the things that they're chatting about and you don't have the same references. You're an outsider in a lot of the chat. Just be careful, OP. You sound a bit ignorant/knee jerk about Roblox, for example. Why not set up an account and play some of the games too? There's lots to like about it and you can put appropriate controls in place (no chat facility) to make it totally safe.

I'm going to ban it too. It drives me nuts and turn my children into unimaginative little robots saying the same things as the streamers. It's going to be tough over the shool holidays so solidarity to all of you doing the same!

Why isn't Roblox happening? its better than Fortnite.

Plus my kids play Roblox, watch youTube, are nice kids and happy to help around the house - plus they are soaring academically, multiple scholarships to independent schools and amazing friendship groups. But you do you.

Dd does have friends that play Roblox but they also do loads of stuff outside of that together that it’s not a big topic of conversation. They don’t even mention it on play dates.

As she gets older obviously I’ll keep this in mind, but honestly her friend’s parents have a similar mindset and it’s not an issue.

But they’d probably do even better without it, just saying.

Really? academic/sports/music scholar for one kid and top Grammar school school for the other - I'm quite happy with how well they are doing despite Roblox.

Yes ! Absolutely agree . Personally I found that YouTube would always cause strops when it was time to tune the tablet off .
The only YouTube videos I do allow is drawing tutorials which have been fantastic in teaching him how to draw .

This! It’s ok if you look something up for research or to find out how to do something, or my eldest has some used drawing videos before.

But all the real life stuff for kids is horrendous. It also makes me sad how much time some of those kids actually spend infront of a camera recording things so their parents make money.

It took me a while to figure it out, but banning YouTube Kids has made a big improvement in our household! They started off watching the nice educational stuff (cooking, drawing, all the great science stuff) but somehow weaned the algorithm onto the toy propaganda and Roblox/Minecraft videos which seemed to trip a switch and cause no end of squabbles, fighting and constant demand for toys. My eldest plays Minecraft and I have no issue with the games, it’s just the gaming videos seem to bring out bad behaviour. They can still watch whatever they want, but it’s proper TV shows rather than an endless stream of nonsense and advertising.

That's what mine does too. I subscribe to a few science channels and a few like Bluey, and add stuff on volcanoes etc as it comes up. I check regularly what he's watching and block some of it - the ones that are essentially promoting toys are rubbish so they always go.

I'm confused by the logic of banning YouTube kids. I would rather mine watch educational stuff than Disney all the time.

Can't you just subscribe to trusted channels? How are kids accessing streamers unless you actively add them?

I'm coming to the point of banning YouTube as well, it's absolute drivel and definitely affects behaviour.

I have no problem with screen time at all but watching narcissistic parents pimping their kids for views is not it.

I’d far rather my daughter was watching something quirky on YouTube than the mindlessly-formulaic bloody Disney channel.

Surely YouTube is popular because, unlike the Disney channel, everything on it hasn’t been focus grouped to death.

It’s banned in my house too!!
My child’s behaviour has massively improved since! I think the constant ability to ‘skip’ made her so impatient and just angry all the time.
My niece of a similar age has unlimited screen time and has developed an alarming American accent and struggles to maintain a normal conversation.
It will never make a return here.

I do have an issue with BBC iPlayer. You can't block anything there. It would be lovely if my SEN child was watching content like Julia Donaldson or Numberblocks for language and numbers, but he watches stuff much younger than his age, something called Googlies, that I can't see what he's getting out of.

It's weird that Disney attracts so much hate. It's no worse than Netflix, Amazon or any of the other streaming service. It's the McDonalds of the streaming services, everyone just loves to hate it, yet there's literally nothing wrong with it.

How can you possibly think screen time is all the same? You honestly don't think that different types of content affect children differently?

I don't hate Disney - we have Disney+ and a very big collection of secondhand dvds that line can watch when they want! He did tend to skip through it, whereas if it's on TV he's watch it all one one go.

I think a lot of it it down to your child as well.

My son uses YouTube for his various ever changing obsessions; flags of the world and how to do skateboarding tricks and build your own pool in the garden (🤣) and stats about footballers that he memorises.

If they're just using it to watch kids prance about doing nothing in particular then yeah. If I see that I switch it off and send him outside to do something interesting.

Well I suppose it’s because Disney is such an unstoppable monolith (owning Fox, Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm etc.) It’s hard to avoid content that they don’t have a hand in.

also they really are the poster children for pro-trans agenda.

Is she still allowed an hour of TV a day?

Same here, OP. At least Disney etc stuff has a beginning, middle and end. YouTube is just shouting hyped up repeated clips. I don’t agree that ‘screen time is screen time’.

I agree about the shite youtube shorts and shitty american girls stuff.

But at the same time YT is ace for research on countries/activities/sports. We watch a lot of french mountain biking, ultra running and rock climbing vids