I’m becoming more and more frustrated with YouTube, because I have seen it take my stepson and my son and turn them in to bedridden sloths. Ok that was hyperbole but there is a whole new level of friction to get them to do anything around the house or even get out of the car when we arrive somewhere. Of course as their parent I impose boundaries on YouTube time. However I don’t think that YouTube has been a great influence on either of them. It’s a hard problem.
my cousins kids will watch youtube videos on their phone/tablet while playing games on another phone/tablet or on another monitor screen while playing fortnite/pc games
youtube is dangerous; just like netflix and facebook, they're designed to get people to stay on for as long as possible and obviously children are very susceptible to the design
'Socrates famously warned against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.” He also advised that children can’t distinguish fantasy from reality, so parents should only allow them to hear wholesome allegories and not “improper” tales, lest their development go astray. '
'The French statesman Malesherbes railed against the fashion for getting news from the printed page, arguing that it socially isolated readers and detracted from the spiritually uplifting group practice of getting news from the pulpit. A hundred years later, as literacy became essential and schools were widely introduced, the curmudgeons turned against education for being unnatural and a risk to mental health. An 1883 article in the weekly medical journal the Sanitarian argued that schools “exhaust the children’s brains and nervous systems with complex and multiple studies, and ruin their bodies by protracted imprisonment.” Meanwhile, excessive study was considered a leading cause of madness by the medical community.'
' In 1936, the music magazine the Gramophone reported that children had “developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker” and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds. '
I think this is an effect which has emerged out of our overall culture and access to media -- we've trained our brains to be need these constant dopamine hits and our attention spans have suffered.
I too have found myself watching a tech talk on youtube, and if the dopamine hits aren't coming fast enough, I'll reflexively open up a web browser and start surfing, or vice-versa. I've become aware, and try to stop it, but it is an urge for sure. I didn't do this a few years ago.
TV has stuff like Broadcast Standards & Practices, which functions to keep its content within a certain envelope.
YouTube does not. YouTube just cares about what gets people to watch and watch and watch. YouTube will happily feed you endless rants about white ethnostates if that's what meets its criteria for "creating engagement".
I have a few issues with YouTube that I don’t have with other things computer/screen time related.
1) I can’t police what they are watching easily. I’m not saying I want to have them be completely sheltered, but since any knucklehead out there can make content, they usually do...
2) I don’t have the same problem with my son spending 2 hours playing super Mario maker(a favorite of his) or to a lesser extent fortnite or other games
What clouds this somewhat is that he spends about half the time on YouTube watching videos about his favorite games, where he learns more about them. There is just an addictive quality that I don’t like about YouTube.
Get them some old power tools from a resale shop, a small sledgehammer and teach them to "Focus you fack!" perhaps? That and some Big Clive could lead to a fair amount of active learning with things that aren't too expensive if you can get them interested in learning what's actually happening to the point of being able to explain it.
Edit: power tools to be disassembled, not so much used
