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Comment by harryf | Hacker News Reader

Sorry but I strongly disagree with the "it's the parents job" argument.

Today on HN there was an interesting discussion on addictive apps - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15662004

In essence you have parents vs the best funded organizations in the world, packed with PhDs working full time to grab all our attention, children being the most susceptible. The only advantage parents is physical proximity. Disadvantages include lack of time, knowledge, awareness etc. I'm not betting on parents winning

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I'm not sure why this was downvoted. This same debate has taken place with every medium so far and the same inane point - "it's up to the parents" - was raised for TV, video games, etc.

Yes, it's up to the parents. But unless you have time to pre-screen every minute of content your kids watch (hint: if you have a job, you don't have time to do this), at some point you have to trust a ratings agency like MPAA, ESRB, or a company like Google when they say - "this content here, it's safe for kids". The obvious problem is that YouTube Kids is utterly failing at this.

What's the realistic alternative? Watching hours upon hours of kids content on YouTube and creating your own playlists? How do you stop a child from going to a "recommended video" afterwards? What about ad content, how do you filter that?

Edit: The only realistic alternative is not letting kids watch YouTube. This is fine, but then maybe Google should not be advertising a section of YouTube as "for kids".

In Sweden we have some commercial free television channels that are run by the state. It also has play services for all content. One of the play services is "the children's channel" which has something like 100 curated kid's shows (from all over the world). No commercials. My kids can watch whatever shows they like there and it feels safe. Is there anything similar in the US?

No. Nothing like that. At best it's a few channels from Disney, which is def not for the childs best interest besides non-sexual themes and ads.

And even then, things get pretty sexual.

PBS Kids is our rough equivalent, but it's not free to get it streaming 24/7 the way YouTube Kids is.

Check your local over-the-air stations; PBS has a separate digital channel for children's programming here, so it's always available.

> But unless you have time to pre-screen every minute of content your kids watch (hint: if you have a job, you don't have time to do this) ... > Watching hours upon hours of kids content on YouTube

I would argue that if your kids are watching so much of this stuff that you don't have time to monitor it, they're watching way too much of it. "Hours upon hours" is definitely way too much.

Your kids will survive even if they're not plugged in to streaming media 24/7/365. Really.

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