I don’t understand why YT a kids isn’t a completely parent controlled thing. I’d like to be able to simply choose the channels that my kids can watch any time, and let’s leave it at that.
I could ask the same question about other services like Netflix, Amazon Freetime, etc. I’m so tired of services completely missing the ball on what I want as a parent, which is really nothing more than presenting my child a locked down profile with access to content I have whitelisted - but everything operates on the curation+blacklist model instead.
Because in the modern walled garden, all decisions must be made by the benevolent corporation for benefit of the consumer. We're paid to think so you don't have to!
One of my chief complaints about social media once we entered the age of Facebook was "I miss being able to use the platform on my terms". Stop telling me I should check out this, or react to that, or signal my approval to the other just because my friends did. Remember on Myspace how if you wanted the world's ugliest page with marquee animated gifs of a 3D baby dancing across the banner...YOU COULD. Nobody was stopping you. Myspace gave you the canvass, and said "go have fun, add a few friends, talk about concerts".
If myspace gave us the canvas and an unlimited selection of paint colors, Facebook gave us a color by numbers coloring book and four pre-approved shades of blue, along with a small static shock whenever a color went over the line.
And you know what? As a guy with no kids If it takes parents getting mad at YouTube to finally get some sort of critical mass on giving more control to the end user how they interact with the platform (aside from obvious outliers like malicious/offensive/illegal content), I'm all about it.
I wish platforms would realize this. We're glad to use the platforms, just stop trying to herd us into doing it the way you want.
Maybe I'm looking at too rosy of an ideal, here though.
This will be awesome, same for Netflix. Another problem to fix is limiting watching to certain times and durations. I wonder if there are third party apps that aggregate across YT and Netflix and has these features in a legal manner.
For the time limits you could take a look at Circle, which allows you reasonable control (at an individual level) of when and how long your children are using Netflix etc. And offers some control of what (by classified type) or domain whitelist/blacklist. Don’t think I can block specific urls so can’t achieve whitelist only YouTube.
I spend tons of time with my kids. If I need to prepare food or feed my picky daughter, YouTube can be helpful. This kind of shaming doesn’t help and I don’t buy that you can watch your kids 24/7.
Besides, have you ever had a bad day and wanted to finish dinner while your child decided to be a bit bratty? It’s not the best choice to put kids in front of screens and I do it very minimally, but this shaming tactic isn’t helpful
My parents worked multiple jobs, still had the time to make selections of titles to give me - or not.
This is not a corporation's job. Multiple streaming services have kid sections, downloading actual files that are the ones you want your child to see, etc.
Curating content for your children has never been faster or easier, so...how'd our parents do it?
That just turns into helicopter parenting, which causes a lot of problems. You can do both; Spend time with your kids, and let them do their own thing within set constraints.
Why does this not exist?