\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hat role does YouTube play in the lives of Australian families with children? As the federal government plans to include YouTube in its forthcoming ban on social media accounts for children under the age of 16, Guardian readers responded to a call out about their own kids\u2019 use of the platform and what they thought of the ban.<\/p>\n This is what they told us.<\/p>\n Parents frequently reported they were restricting their children\u2019s use to shared areas by co-watching or through parental controls. But many said this was time-intensive and nearly impossible to maintain and were concerned about what content was slipping under their radar.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cWe use YouTube Kids and always check what they watch before we let them watch anything on there. We do this because YouTube cannot be trusted \u2013 the algorithm leads you very quickly down weird or concerning rabbit holes and the messaging in a video is often subtle and hard to screen as a parent without pre-watching everything (which is not realistic).<\/p>\n \u201cThe final reason [we restrict our children\u2019s use] is because of my own experience with YouTube as an adult. I currently feel like I am having to actively fight against the algorithm taking me in direction I don\u2019t want to go. I watch one video of a gel blaster, and I get 100 videos of Americans shooting guns. One video of a bodybuilder in the gym and I get 100 scantily clad fitness models \u2026 If I have to fight this hard, YouTube would do the same with my kids.\u201d \u201cBefore we removed it, our children would watch YouTube for hours. We removed it because they would get stuck in gratification loops and jump from one video to the next.<\/p>\n \u201cI have enjoyed watching some videos with our children. Some are clever and very funny. But ultimately it\u2019s too difficult to regulate, filter content and be sure they\u2019re not being exposed to potentially harmful content. We have three boys and we\u2019re aware that many videos contain explicit and implicit attitudes that young boys can be influenced by when it comes to women, for example.\u201d \u201cYouTube is the bane of our existence \u2013 we wish it never existed. Our son locks himself in his room and for the recent school holidays spent almost the entire two weeks on YouTube and gaming. We\u2019ve got no idea what harmful content he\u2019s seen as there always seems to be a loophole to internet monitoring software.\u201d \u201cYouTube provides next to no useful parental controls over content and the few measures they do have are next to useless (having gone through the whole thing very recently). While so far we have been lucky in that [our son\u2019s] rather narrow focus has kept his feed relatively free of less than ideal content, we are always concerned that he will be served up something totally inappropriate.\u201d \u201cThere is no control over what they see. Even with strict settings on YouTube kids, my child was automatically played horrific content disguised as kid\u2019s TV.\u201d \u201cIt is simply impossible to monitor the content that is being viewed but even through occasional glances at the feed I can tell that my daughter is being exposed to a lot of material with beauty\/body image stereotypes, while my son\u2019s feed tends to be more larrikin\/sport oriented. I am also left with the impression that the content is rife with misinformation.\u201d \u201cMy children are children and by that definition are easily swayed by bright lights and dopamine-releasing repetitive reward programming. My issues with YouTube is that it is used as a kind of poker machine to make money off of our built in thirst for dopamine and we all have been sucked in. I would prefer more controls to avoid the rubbish while benefiting from the very good content available but alas the reality is that the educational stuff is not the money maker, the brain draining, high energy, colourful trope is the heart of what runs this behemoth.\u201d From fleeting attention spans and hours wasted to concerns about the content that can slip under the radar of children\u2019s YouTube feeds<\/strong>, many parents felt the YouTube algorithm encouraged excessive use and offered potentially harmful content.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI do worry how short content impacts their ability to pay attention and I notice that a TV or a movie definitely doesn\u2019t hold their attention for as long. We have to give a warning before we turn it off to manage the transition away from screens. Some of the content certainly seems mindless (like my daughter watching another child playing with dolls) but they also regularly tell me interesting facts and info they\u2019ve learned on YouTube.\u201d \u201cThe waste of time it actively cultivates through the algorithm, there\u2019s no warning as to what will pop up next, it seems to get weirder and more extreme the longer you watch it. I have no faith in the tech companies caring about the wellbeing of children. I think they actively create algorithms that are harmful in purpose to get eyeballs for longer.\u201d \u201cIf left to watch YouTube by themselves, as they have occasionally at friends\u2019 houses, it is always puerile, short-attention-span mashup [of] rubbish or scary videos such as [the horror video game] Poppy Playtime, etc. Our youngest watched three hours of this at a friend\u2019s house a few years ago and had nightmares for months.<\/p>\n I\u2019m very supportive of the educational content in YouTube, but despite having free access to this the kids just do not seem to choose to watch it and only watch rubbish.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s has been (at times) frustrating due to YouTube being happy to expose our kids to inappropriate content. Shorts is diabolical. But it has gotten better once we could identify our kids as YouTube users.\u201d Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/p>\n \u201cI teach ethics at a local public school and in a section where we asked about a dream job about half the kids said they wanted to be gamer YouTubers, which is a concern, although older age groups seem to grow out of this.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cI am less concerned about \u2018inappropriate content\u2019 as I am about completely valueless content, and kids don\u2019t have the ability to discern the difference.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a genuine addiction, including full-on tantrums when it is restricted.\u201d \u201cThey can watch it for hours without breaks. So the rule we have now is one hour a day. Especially for my 7-year-old who would immediately melt down and cry when it was turned off. That was a very big sign that it was not creating positive feedback to him.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/span><\/p>\n Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cMy 12-year-old has better governance, but has on occasions been frightened by videos that have come up appearing to be for kids, but been disturbing instead … We really hate YouTube, though, and wish it wasn\u2019t there for us to contend with.\u201d \u201cHe used to be able watch what he wanted, but he would only watch shorts. We found that watching these shorts all the time was effecting his mood. Since we limit his YouTube to more educational stuff, we have found his mood to be a lot more stable.\u201d Many parents cited huge educational benefits from YouTube, from supporting niche hobbies to allowing children a creative outlet as content creators themselves.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI am concerned about the level of unfiltered content he could easily be exposed to if he strayed off the path, but I am actually more concerned about the possibility of him losing access to it. He learned how to crochet from YouTube, we both learned about intersectional feminism and we are about to jointly learn how to weatherproof our flat.\u201d \u201cWe use YouTube for education (eg Ms Rachel, how things are made, volcanoes, David Attenborough content), entertainment (Puffing Billy videos, music videos eg Teeny Tiny Stevies). I am a music teacher and use YouTube every day (online footage of musical performances, tutorial videos, other students playing students pieces, professional recordings of band pieces etc). [YouTube is] the best education platform in the history of civilisation!!!\u201d \u201cBoth my sons 11 and 14 regularly use YouTube for information and gaming videos. My eldest has an account where he makes videos about his ant colonies. He has about 100 followers, other kids who are into ants. I don\u2019t [support the ban]. Many kids are just sharing their knowledge and passions which is healthy.\u201d \u201cOur son uses YouTube daily for his main hobby, which is stop-motion filming with Lego setups. He spends many hours on beautiful video clips, edits them and uploads the final product to YouTube where he has followers on his own channel. The whole thing is a really creative, productive hobby, and YouTube plays a central part in it.\u201d Parents had a diverse range of views on whether or not a ban on under-16s from having their own YouTube accounts is desirable or effective, citing concerns about privacy in the proposed law alongside a frustration that parents were unable to protect their children from harmful or excessive use without more regulation.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t support the current legislation at all. It should be biased toward making the tech companies change their content policies, not require more [personal identification] be uploaded to the internet for age verification purposes.\u201d \u201cNow I will have to put my own YouTube access into restricted mode to give to them access, or create a fake account, which I do not want to do. My partner and I will decide what my children watch and what social media they have access to. This is just more boomers and [members of] gen X making decisions about, and interfering with, things that are none of their business.\u201d \u201cDigital platforms and tech bros make billions out of content creators\u2019 violent antisocial material and it is watched over and over by impressionable kids. Parents struggle to police this and the only winners are the content creators and the digi-tech billionaire platform owners.\u201d \u201cTheir accounts give us a history of what has been watched. [A ban is] unenforceable. It\u2019s a breach of my privacy to have to register myself.\u201d \u201c100% [I support the ban]. The tech companies, despite their protestations, have proven themselves, over and over again, to have little to no interest in creating a safe environment for kids.\u201d \u201cI hem and haw about it. I\u2019m sure that the ban will be easily breached by the under-16s who are determined. But I also think that it\u2019s, at least, some sort of proactive method to try and halt kids and young teens from viewing inappropriate material.\u201d What role does YouTube play in the lives of Australian families with children? As the federal government plans to include YouTube in its forthcoming ban on social media accounts for children under the age of 16, Guardian readers responded to a call out about their own kids\u2019 use of the platform and what they thought<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[8173,3156,862,1265],"class_list":{"0":"post-14552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-existed","9":"tag-familys","10":"tag-readers","11":"tag-youtube"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Simply impossible to monitor\u2019<\/h2>\n
Marty, father of two children under 9, Brisbane <\/em>
Parent of three children who are 13, 11 and 6 years old, Adelaide <\/em>
Dan, parent of a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old, Melbourne <\/em>
Gerard, father of a 13-year-old, Canberra<\/em><\/p>\n
Peter, father of three children who are 2, 4 and 6 years old, Sydney <\/em><\/p>\n
Richard, parent of a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old, Hobart <\/em>
Monique, parent of an 8-year-old and an 11-year-old, Bell Post Hill <\/em><\/p>\n\u2018<\/strong>They can watch it for hours without breaks\u2019<\/h2>\n
Parent of a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, Sydney<\/em>
Alicia, parent of an 8-year-old and a 12-year-old, Colonel Light Gardens<\/em>
Damien<\/em>, father of a 9-year-old and a 12-year-old, Sydney<\/em>
Matt<\/em>, father of a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old, Ballarat <\/em><\/p>\n
Parent of a 15, 13 and 10-year-old, Sydney<\/em>
Parent of a 16-year-old, Brisbane, Queensland <\/em>
Parent of three children who are 7, 10 and 12 years old, Harrisdale<\/em>
Kevin, father of a 13-year-old, Burua <\/em><\/p>\n\u2018He learned to crochet from YouTube\u2019<\/h2>\n
Single parent to a teenage son, ACT<\/em><\/p>\n
Parent to a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, Melbourne<\/em>
Parent of a 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, Sydney <\/em>
Dan Arno, father of an 11-year-old son, Munich<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018If these companies will not regulate themselves then something has to be done\u2019<\/h2>\n
Parent of a 12-year-old and a 15-year-old, Brisbane <\/em>
Parent of two children, Western Sydney<\/em>
Parent of a 16-year-old son, Windsor<\/em>
Tim, parent of two children, Blackburn<\/em>
Gerard, father of a 13-year-old son, Canberra<\/em><\/p>\n
Parent of a 5-year-old son, Adelaide<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"