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Comment by zippo_the_zippo | Hacker News Reader

YouTube Kids is exempt from the ban, this one should have been banned first because the sheer amount of smoothbrain content.

Channels like cocomelon and AI-generated songs with weird visuals are played on infinite loop with a mobile stand holding the phone in front of the child's pram while the parents pay no attention- and the children are hooked onto it as if they are hypnotized.

These videos in early stage of childhood has a very strong impact on environmental awareness and vocabulary of the children.

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Aren't parents like that going to ignore the development of their child anyway?

Yes, and I agree that bad parenting is the real issue, but I also have to acknowledge that leaving children unsupervised will have better results if they don't have the option of just watching a screen.

That said, I don't see any bans changing this, parents will just give young children access to their own "adult" YouTube account.

> Yes, and I agree that bad parenting is the real issue, but I also have to acknowledge that leaving children unsupervised will have better results if they don't have the option of just watching a screen.

...Would it? I'm not advocating for this by any means, but at least they'd then be sat in one spot and not, say, roaming around the house, getting into things that might hurt them even more than the screen.

> These videos in early stage of childhood has a very strong impact on environmental awareness and vocabulary of the children.

I just managed to navigate the entire preschool age range without my children seeing a single cocomelon video on youtube. Its surprisingly easy, and makes me really wonder why people are complaining. Its as if they feel like they have to show these videos to their kids or something.

Dont people have a slop filter? Or are they just opening the youtube kids app and blindly handing their phone to a preschool child to watch whatever they want?

The argument is, apparently, that keeping your pre-school children away from these things is just too hard in this day and age. Your wee child will be ostracized if they don't have unfettered access to the Internet...

The parents putting these videos on autoplay are usually the ones who can’t afford to spend quality time with their kid.

Yet their kid demands attention. So they put the phone in front of them to be able to do whatever they needed to do.

I don’t really blame them, in today’s economic climate there are a lot of people who have to struggle every waking second to get by.

I would argue that for every person that 'can’t afford' to spend time with their children, there are 2 who are just too lazy. Thats the real sad issue here.

they said the same thing about books, "young people are hypnotised!" And I agree that it has an impact on vocabulary, it widens it. You learn to talk by hearing other people do it, and youtube is full of different accents and ways of talking. How many parents would take them outside to meet that many different people?

> they said the same thing about books, "young people are hypnotised!"

It really doesn't matter what "they" said about books. We are talking about screen time. And screen time has measurably harmful effects on child development.

It leads to worse outcomes across the board. Sleep disorders. Obesity. Mental health disorders. Depression. Anxiety. Decreased ability to interpret emotions. Aggressive conduct. And this is to say nothing of ADHD (7.7 times higher likelihood in the heaviest screen users) or social media's effects on adolescents. [1][2]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10353947/

[2] https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/childhood-adhd...

aggressive conduct lol, i think youre getting away with yourself there. how come adults are immune to it? i mean youre on social media right this second (decrying it but lets ignore that), how hasnt it affected you in that way? or is this "good" social media?

The post you are trying to refute has a source which is a study that found "It can obstruct the ability to interpret emotions, fuel aggressive conduct, and harm one's psychological health in general."

so why are you on social media right now if its so dangerous?

No one says adults are immune to it, we also have less neuroplasticity - I can imagine that if I’d had more screen time growing up, while my brain was developing, it would have had more of an impact on me. That’s not to say it’s all bad, I think like most anything else we need to approach it with moderation especially when it comes to children.

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