Banning YouTube at home

[LetitciaB]

I am looking for some advice on how to gently ban YouTube in our home. At the moment my 10 year old is allowed to watch 30mins in the afternoon as long as it is where we can hear/ supervise what they are watching. DC is very good with that and will switch off when asked after 30mins. DC doesn’t have their own account and just watches rather than anything else. I have wanted to ban this for a while, not because DC is watching anything bad it’s just so mindless. He doesn’t use any other sort of social media, just YouTube.

With the government ban coming in I was thinking of just banning it and taking YouTube off the kindle.

I was wondering if anyone had a good way to do this without making him feel that he has done something wrong.

Thanks!

Block it from your router. Instructions can be found online.

Just block it. I have an 8 & 13 year old. We’ve never allowed it on our tvs. We don’t have any tablets, but it’s blocked on 13 year olds phone. On occasion, she will need to watch something specific on it (for homework, for example) and then she can come to us and we can unblock it temporarily.

What do you mean by ‘gentle’?

I’d explain it roughly you have done here. ‘Darling, scientists have realised that YouTube is really damaging, particularly for children, for XYZ reason. So we’re not going to have it at home any more. We all need to veg out sometimes so have you thought about watching ABC sensible things? And we’ll get you some new craft stuff / sports equipment / promise to see more of friends / whatever because I know you’ll be wondering what you’ll do after school’.

Why do you need to be “gentle” and why would he think he’s done anything wrong?

There’s no need to be tiptoeing round your children. It’s really simple, you tell him the government have now restricted content to over 16s and delete it

Genuinely curious how easy it is to block/unblock stuff? I use YouTube a lot for exercise so wouldn’t want to totally be unable to access it. But equally it is the only social media thing we ever even dabble in with my ten year old.

Depends if you know the passwords or not. Presumably you wouldn’t be sharing them with a ten year old

You can’t gently ban it, you either ban it or you don’t. You just delete it.
This is overthinking to the point of passive parenting.

Thank you for this. You are absolutely right. I will just rip the plaster off and block it. I will explain the science and legal aspects and buy some more sports stuff for the garden. Thank you for the straightforward replies. Much needed and appreciated!

Why can't he just watch normal TV for his 30 minutes?
There's excellent programmes on CBBC.

No! She thinks I’m an unreasonable dictator because she doesn’t know my phone password let alone for anything else. But is that password protecting the app on the TV or is it logging onto the router somehow? I have never learnt how to do the latter/didn’t know it was possible to do easily

YouTube kids is a thing,with content controls by age rating.

I have no skin in this game because my kids are early twenties so was never really an issue.
But I’m glad that parents of younger children will feel more emboldened to restrict access to devices, it can only be a good thing.

Well done OP. I hope many more parents of younger children do the same

Like others have said just explain it. I banned my kids last year and said there has been some new research saying how addictive it is and it rots brains