Is a post-screen comedown after YouTube normal for children?

[TwoBoysDad]

The “post-screen” comedown / meltdown — is it a real thing?
My boys (11 & 8) watch maybe 30 mins of YouTube Kids or have some screen time most days. The content’s fine, Lego, dinosaurs, the usual. But there’s a thing that happens after they switch off. They’re not calmer or absorbed in what they watched. More wired. They’re slightly hyper, can’t settle, want more, snap at each other over nothing. It lasts maybe 20-30 minutes then passes.
I don’t get this after CBeebies. Or a Netflix film. There’s something specific about the YouTube format — the rapid cuts, the autoplay, the constant next-thing — that seems to leave them in a different state.
Has anyone else noticed this? Or am I making patterns out of normal small-kid behaviour? And if you have — has anything actually helped, beyond just turning it off?

I think in lockdown parents understandably allowed their children more time on screens and it then became the norm. When iPads first came popular I remember being judgemental that children were saying things like ‘I made biscuits last night’ or ‘I played football’ when they meant doing it on an iPad, now I long for those days. At least they were using their brains.

Children are just watching twenty seconds of something then scrolling on. I’ve had a parent say to me that their child prefers to watch Bluey on you tube rather than iplayer and then I discover it’s because they are clips, not whole seven minutes episodes with a storyline.

The concentration levels of children are truly appalling now.

That’s just an excuse though. Children do loads of things at school or at home that they don’t to at the other place.

It’s the same with friends. If they go to a friend’s house and they go on YouTube it’s not going to addle their brain into mush. And parents do things in different ways and part of going on play dates is seeing just that. My dd once went to a friend’s after school where they only had chopsticks so she had to learn how to use them. But she didn’t then think we should only have chopsticks.

Dopamine hit shows, YouTube and the awful numberbot/doodle math apps are all banned in my house for this reason. DD goes mental after watching it all.

I used to find this with my son detaching from computer games at similar ages. We set a time limit of 30min, and expectations and consequences for behaviour after finishing his set time. The book 'The Explosive Child' by Ross Greene explained it as delayed development in the areas of flexibility and tolerance of change. My other children didn't exhibit the same behaviour. FWIW, he's now a highly successful adult, in part due to the coping skills he learned early on when dealing with frustration etc.

livre2.com/LIVREE/E1/E001016.pdf#:~:text=The%20Explosive%20Child,for%20size%20a%20new%20phi%2D

I would rather my guys watch a Pixar movie for two hours than 20 mins of YouTube. There's loads of stuff I've seen discussing all screen time not being equal and quality is as important of quantity. My guys were like zombies in front of YouTube and gremlins after, but after an hour of octonauts or a movie they end up integrating play or naturally getting up. Defo not zombies.

We have this issue too, but I try to set timers to minimise their usage and once they are used to that being the way the melt downs do stop. The biggest issue for me is that even with all of the parental controls turned on, I hear bad things getting through.

We have this issue too, but I try to set timers to minimise their usage and once they are used to that being the way the melt downs do stop. The biggest issue for me is that even with all of the parental controls turned on, I hear bad things getting through.

Yes YouTube is basically just slop.

I'm anti short form slop when they're young
11 should be easier to regulate after though. Have you talked to them about how YouTube in general affects their brains, the colours, fast jump cuts, destroy all concentration etc
May be easier for them to understand

Its not even just YouTube- amazon kids is full of slop and some Netflix shows.
You need to not let them watch stupid stuff like other kids playing games/shirt form content and use YouTube for finding documentaries, Sam o'nella is a good history one, old dvds/old media on youtube.

Why don't you get them a desktop PC and have them play games on there. Actually learning a keyboard and mouse, some games are fine
TV can just be free view and dvds or VPN and streaming