I have been thinking about this problem of "digital curation" quite a bit in the last few months. This is the core thesis: The role of children's teachers and caretakers in curating an environment for children to learn and grow is more important than ever with the overwhelming variety of books, videos, shows, etc all of varying quality and alignment with the interests of the caretaker and child. However, curation in the digital age is also more difficult than ever. The web is a collection of walled gardens which give parents limited and inconsistent controls over what the child will see once inside the walled garden. And, adding controls on-top of a walled garden is impossible or only possible by very computer savvy users.

To be clear this isn't about hiding information from kids. It is about providing places for their curiosity that is age appropriate and of a high quality. What I think all caretakers seek to avoid are books that are of low quality or age inappropriate (e.g. AI generated, scenes of suicide, etc), video that are developed in the style of the Cocomelon "distract-a-tron"[1], or software that encourages gacha gaming and/or uncontrolled open chat/video/etc.

What are ways care takers can practically and easily curate today?

Examples

- YouTube Kids

- Jellyfin, Kavita, or Calibre for ebooks

- Open WebUI with a custom system prompt for kids

Counter Examples

- Netflix, Disney, Amazon, etc: difficult to non-existent curation controls - all or nothing

- Kindle Kids: there are controls but for Library books the process is 12+ clicks between the Libby and Kindle app: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/devices/can-you-share-kindl...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/05/arts/television/cocomelon...