Age appropriate viewing

[djdsllwjhqwwaew]

Hi everybody.

I'm not especially bothered about my 6 year old son seeing things which are a bit above his age grade on YouTube but it is driving my partner wild.

By default YouTube content has limits which top out in areas like actual harm (rather than baddies fighting goodies in a trailer for a film for instance) and porn and that sort of thing. So I'm fairly comfortable he isn't going to be able to actually see anything that's really truly harmful.

I know from being in the house with someone who takes the opposite view that my standpoint isn't universally accepted and I'm familiar with all the arguments against it. As far as I'm concerned I feel having drummed it into him that everything he sees on YouTube isn't real and made on computers that he knows he's watching fake stuff.

My partner will allow him to watch higher rated films if pre-approved. i.e. if we know what's in it then we may let him watch a 12-rated film (some of the Harry Potter films are 12-rated).

I have two questions if I've not bored people to death already:

1. Does exposure to computer generated monsters (animated spiders for instance) and shark attacks and that sort of thing pose a real risk to children or are there benefits to broadening their horizons by allowing them to see new things they've not seen before to keep them learning and increasing vocabulary, knowledge of the world etc?
2. Is there a way to set up home theatre equipment so it is guaranteed they can only view safe content if they come in from school and grab the remote and have free reign to browse while we're doing housework and not directly helicoptering? We were able to put a PIN on Amazon Prime but can't seem to do anything about YouTube. We would like him to be able to use the TV but not to be able to look up monster movie trailers. With Amazon Prime he is ridiculous, he opens it and browses through pictures of films but can't access any of them because you have to put in a PIN to be able to play the film. Anybody got a safe setup that allows freedom but has limits? What equipment / services do you have?

Yeah, my partner does not like the stuff on the YouTube guest account either. We have a Roku streamer box as our device and it seems to forget that YouTube kids has been configured. So it'll be there immediately after setting up but if I logon with my account it wipes off the YouTube kids setup so they end up on a normal adult profile inevitably.

Can't do that as we have a personal email server which has to be connected all the time.

I'm of the view that I just require a better streamer with better parental controls? There must be something out there that can PIN protect apps and properly control the YouTube kids v.s. YouTube adults.

TBF we're quite lax in that our 7 year old has watched all of the Avengers movies, is currently watching mandalorian and simialr things.

but he has absolutely 0 access to any form of YouTube and it's staying that way. He can watch Disney+, Prime, Netflix and Iplayer. He has a switch which he is allowed for gaming (not online) and many options for TV but YouTube is not even on his radar.