Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

Comment by corysama | Hacker News Reader

In the past couple of years there has been a huge uptick in YT content targeting very young children. The feedback loop is so tight that many of the creators have converged on designing some of the most visceral (and disturbing) material that appeals to kids at a reptilian level. Think about how genuinely weird little kids are. Sometimes they do stuff that would be scary if it wasn't just a minute of innocent pretend and a toy. Stuff like kidnapping each other or performing surgery on each other. Well, now there are hundreds of thousands of YT videos illustrating that kind of material in fine detail. Many of them have millions of views.

This site [1] has a good collection of screenshots of what I'm referring to. Unfortunately, it's such a heavyweight site that AdBlock is practically required just to open the page.

[1] https://vigilantcitizen.com/moviesandtv/something-is-terribl... "Warning: This article contains disturbing images … although they’re all taken from children’s videos."

If your children are watching YouTube, make sure they are doing it only when and where you are able to see what they are watching.

I noticed this myself watching my friends young cousin browse Youtube.. his feed was half clickbait 20-something white guys yelling at you to subscribe Minecraft videos, half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article.

If I ever have kids, there's no way in hell I'm letting them run free with an iPad or iPhone. I know it's the "easy way out" to distract your kids at the dinner table, but I can't help but feel like it's bad for their mental development. Then again, I was part of the first generation that grew up with the modern internet and am decently well adjusted despite being exposed to weird content at a young age. Hm.

You may make a different choice after years of being unable to do anything but give 100% of your attention to the child. Someone needs to cook & clean, or go to work, after all. In the "old days" you'd just cut your kid loose into the environment. Well, these days, TV and iPads are part of the environment, and YouTube along with it.

I'm not saying you wouldn't make boundaries. Boundaries are important. But that may also include a certain amount of time of letting the child "run free" with the iPad.

Elsagate

Or you just do it the old fashioned way - teach them to read and give them books. If they can use an iPad they can read.

No. Kids can operate iPads long well before they are able to learn how to read.

I think parent was referring to children that can read, but in any case, children don't come preloaded with tablets, etc.. If my son decides to get crafty and throw a fit because I will not let him play with my phone (ever) or a PS4 controller or whatever, his ass can sit in his room and figure it out and/or cry. I don't negotiate with terrorists.

My child was competently operating an iPad before he could talk or walk

Mine too, and it is amazing. Would yours also try to touch the TV to swipe it?

My 4 year old is just now learning to use a mouse, but she's been at a touchscreen for over 3 years.

My daughter is 3 and learned to use a phone/tablet before she was 2. Whenever I'd pull up YouTube on my tv she'd walk to the tv and try to swipe it as well. Often getting upset thinking the tv was broken, haha.

She was used to iPads, but one day I gave her my Android tablet. She was upset at first because things are slightly different, but adjusted quickly. I was shocked at how fast she picked it up.

I've witnessed this myself, many times. I honestly find the proficiency of iPad finger gestures in children < 2 to be shocking. It feels like I'm viewing some real world parody with how quick and controlled their hand motions are as they navigate through the interface. It really gave me a new appreciation for just how intuitive the UI is for someone with zero technical literacy... or any form of literacy for that matter.

I had one family tell me they learned about five finger swipes from their 1 year old daughter.

It was same with my kid

Some of the books people often think are suitable for children are pretty disturbing, too, such as Grimms' Fairy Tales.

When these are adapted for cartoons by Disney and others they are usually greatly sanitized. A parent who remembers those adaptations and thinks that is what they are getting when they get the original book versions is in for a surprise.

They are full of stories of people who are cruel and who cheat and abuse the weak and innocent, and in the end...that works out great for them and they get everything they wanted.

I would be pretty worried that my kid was hooked up to a virtual Skinner Box actually, and I'd prioritize avoiding that. My friends have managed to keep their 6 year old girl away from this kind of thing, so it's definitely doable.

I hear what you're saying. As a kid in the bad old days, pre-Internet, I used to play outside with my friends for hours at a time. Is that not an option anymore?

No. Many parents are literally paranoid about their kids being harmed, even though many areas have an all-time low of crime in human history. Not to mention, police picking up children who are playing alone and parents getting into trouble for being "irresponsible". It is f'ed up. Many kids just end up choosing the computer because parents make it easier to access than outside playgrounds and it's just as interesting.

It's even weirder since we can give them phones, or watches with integrated phones and gps-trackers and what not.

When I was 12 I yelled a friends name while walking out the door, and was expected to be back by dinner. If I wasn't the best thing my parents could do was to call my friends parents (homes) and ask if I was there.

It's an option if you want to get harassed by Child Protection Services, the police, etc.

All it takes is one asshole (Or good Samaritan) to give the latter a call, and you'll have a lot of explaining to do. And heaven help you if either group finds a joint in your home.

Some examples of that making the news every now and then.

Nobody's gonna call Child Protection Services on you when the kids are at home with the iPad.

Letting a child "running free" with the iPad locked down to Duolingo and Scratch Jr works fine as well.

You can also give them an iPad in Airplane mode.

You can lock down the iPad to not allow youtube, web browsing or any app installs / in app purchases and they have to come to you for permission to install new games.

As a father (who does the cooking), I can relate to that difficulty. However I'm not allowing youtube access precisely because of the unpredictably of the content. I prefer my child to go on a Netflix or Disney Channel binge of her favorite show, rather than let her brain get hacked before she's able to understand what's going on.

But turning the TV off (mobile isn't allowed) usually results in solo play with toys. It took a bit of coaxing but now when sitting down, we agree how many episodes will be watched before the screen goes dark.

I really wish YouTube offered parental controls on the YouTube app for iPads. I catch my toddler watching all kinds of terrible videos.

I think there's some way involving a Google account but it's not obvious.

Apple makes clear youtube app is for 18+, Android has similar req in fine print for youtube app in play store. I would remove youtube and install youtube app for kids.

That's so sad, when I was first aloud to "roam free" on the web at 12 was when I taught myself basic and pascal.

I used it differently back then too. I opened a browser with what I wanted in mind, I found it, then I closed the browser and did something else. There was never this mindless wandering or idle talking, just fetching pdfs and saving html tutorials and downloading compilers. Maybe I've romanticized it though...

YouTube, iPads, TV's, can float around in the homes of other families, and your kids can visit their homes and play on their Xbox or whatever.

But that doesn't mean these things need to be part of your kids home, work, or play routine. Even kids in nice areas around the bay area aren't about to suddenly bring home an iPad or iPhone without their parents notice. Kids will beg, but they will also learn to stop begging; they will learn that their family just does things differently.

I've seen plenty of parents choose NOT to buy their kids a major computing device until junior high age, and prior to then making them go through the inconvenience of typing on their parents computer.

It doesn't screw them up. It doesn't make them socially weird. It doesn't make them technologically aversive later, and it doesn't stunt their enthusiasm for play.

If you want to give your kids unsupervised play, because you need some personal or work time, what's wrong with biking around the city with friends?

Lol! Let's check back when you have a kid of your own. There are so many reasons why your idea of how it works is not quite right. (Bike around the city? A 3yr old? Surely you jest!)

Also part of the first generation internet, definitely believe the internet was deeply harmful to my development, as well as a subset of my peers. Suspect that subset will grow larger with Ipad parenting being normal. Not trying to tell anyone how to parent, but I don't like how ubiquitous internet has become with so little good psychology done on it's effects socially.

Yeah. I learned fascinating things from Wikipedia, learned to develop, which led to working in tech which I am thankful for. But I also went from reading novels for 12 hours a day to browsing reddit for 12 hours a day, which did a number on my brain. Deeply regret it.

I found that it reduced my concentration and ability to focus.

I found the same thing after I started using Twitter and Facebook. Old school websites as a kid? Eh, didn't hurt my concentration that much.

But modern social media sites are something different entirely, and they've likely given their users a 30 second attention span or worse.

watch out though.

"Is captainsparkles child-friendly?" or "child friendly youtubers" into google will return lists saying yes, captainsparkles is child friendly. He's employed by MakerStudios, which is owned by Disney.

Seems pretty solidly okay for children.

Except, when he plays with other people, they'll start swearing.

So, you have to prescreen everything, or have the discussion about language, or just not care about language. (Even if you don't care if your 6 year old says "fuck" I can pretty much guarantee that schools and other parents see it as a problem.)

> half perverted (such as Spiderman kissing Elsa from Frozen) or oddly gory children videos like the ones described in the article.

Sounds a lot like the Cartoon Network I was addicted to as a kid. When I watch some of those cartoons and understand the subtextual jokes ... damn that shit was pervy and weird.

As a kid I had no idea. Didn't even notice, I just liked it when the Coyote got flattened, Dexter's experiment blew up, and Jerry hit Tom with a baseball bat.

Here's an anecdote: My five year old daughter got a new classmate in kindergarten that didn't speak our language but knew a little English.

In some way my daughter must have learned just enough words and sentences to be able to communicate more or less right away. The teachers found this fascinating and asked us if we were teaching her or even talking English at home - which we don't. In fact we had no idea what they were talking about.

Anyway, she seems to understand quite much. I have absolutely no idea where this comes from - the only thing I can think of is that it's because of YouTube.

Not that she spends hours and hours, but since she more or less never watches TV I haven't been bothered that much if she get stuck in front of a tablet for a while.

That being said, I try to be aware of what she's watching because there is some weird stuff out there although I don't exactly think that Spidey kissing is harmful.

My wife is a teacher and one of her students in grade 2 has somehow been seeing beheading videos (apparently on youtube but that seems nearly impossible) because they are left with an ipad for so long. I can't even begin to comprehend what that would do to the brain of a child.

TV for children is very restricted and regulated for a very important reason.

Beheading was public spectacle up until very recently, kids are less distressed by seeing violence than you might think.

If anything it's people with problems that tend to search for such things rather than such videos causing something.

People should read the old, original Brothers Grim stories. Plenty of that was pretty, ahem, grim.

Over the centuries it's been sanitized and Disneyfied, but the primal drives that fascinated by that sort of thing have not gone away.

German censorship around books for children was quite tight actually. Not all of that was for little children, a lot of it effectively scary stories for older ones.

Also half todays cartoons would not pass neither comic code nor restrictions at early movies.

What you describe is a later development. There was no comic code or movie censorship in the 19th century or in the centuries before, wherein lay the sources for the Grimm's tales.

There was however censorship in print in Germany in 19 century and beginning of 20 century.

The comic code and movies are simply two additional examples of historical censorship.

Censorship and criticism of "vulgarities" I honestly think has been around since... well, since art begins. However, the exact nature of what is a vulgarity often differs from culture to culture and from time to time.

In the US, there was no comic code or movie censorship, but there was things like Comstock laws. Would Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" raise many eyebrows today? It did in the 1850s-60s. (http://www.unm.edu/~unmvclib/handouts/bannedboston.pdf)

It is true that Grimm's tales were at first meant to be more of an educational archive of folklore that otherwise would have been lost. (https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/marchapril/feature/how-t...) However, apparently, it was found after publishing that the stories appealed to parents and children. So between the first and seventh edition, apparently the stories were made "more appropriate" for children of that era. (https://books.google.com/books?id=6gX-hNshMJEC&lpg=PR39&dq=M...) In those times, that more meant getting rid of any bawdy humor and any references to sex (violence to a "morally correct" end was okay though).

Culture changes; it seems like nowadays, some degree of bawdy humor is okay in children's entertainment. However, I've seen many articles wondering if the Grimm tales are too scary for kids.

Comic code was a reaction to early and very gritty comics, US comics are still very tame by comparison.

The tame US comic still does not pass all 41 points of 1954 comic code which was fully endorsed. Nor half "Disnified" cartoons and stories for little children.

It is pretty much impossible to defend comic code as written, even ignoring the argument that adults should be able to read horror stories (including those grittier then Game of Thrones) if they like them. Comic code was simply a reaction of people unable to suddenly process that many have different preferences then them.

I am not defending comic code, just stating it was far from the default.

Also, privacy is a relatively modern privilege, for a long time kids grew up around people having sex.

Somehow they failed to be horribly scarred by it.

https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/the-birth-and-death-o...

How did your wife know that the kid was watching beheading videos? Were they cartoon beheading or real?

The child might simply get desensitized.

Try watching disturbing violence (war images/videos for example) for a while yourself. Empathic response will blunt itself within a week or two.

That's probably the scariest thing about disturbing violence. Ceasing to be disturbing is the bigger issue than being disturbing IMO.

But I'm weird and think that it's far better to let children see sex than even regular hollywood violence, and that things like US military recruitment ads and ISIS recruitment videos should be treated identically (restricted behind a warning that they're not for kids). The normalization of violence is a terrible thing.

Sure. As an adult you can still continue seeing it as wrong (if you did before). It will just not give you chills.

Trouble with children is that they may not yet have the moral compass for lack of a better phrase. I would find it important to talk to the child and ask him what he's thinking about the videos, and make sure he understands that the behavior in the videos is horrible, ends the life of another person, what that means, etc. I'd also make sure the child would not get trapped in some cycle of feeling guilty for simply watching some videos and having/not having whatever reactions to it.

> I've spent the last two decades researching Theosophy, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, the Bavarian Illuminati and Western Occultism.

Not a great source though.

My goddaughter is 2 and my girlfriend's nephew (who've I spent considerable amount of time with) is 4. The goddaughter watches may more TV than the 4 year old but both watch a couple of hours a week. I've only seen them view animation videos on youtube that seem like in days gone by would air on PBS.

I'm not sure what kind of parent would let their kids watch stuff like this but it's pretty shocking to see that this stuff is even marketed as "for children". The only "for children" things I've seen on Youtube are pretty innocent animated shorts (lots of nursery rhymes too). But I guess the algorithm will show you what it thinks you like.

Holy shit, that's worse than I expected.

Wow... I had no idea.

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