I successfully kept my kids off of YouTube until their elementary school gave them Chromebooks. Then they were at least only on YouTube during class.

YouTube has a lot of really positive educational content. I have learned so much from it. For instance, I was able to learn photography from it. Yes it’s still social media in a way, but the benefits can really outweigh the drawbacks with proper use.

Shorts as a whole are incredibly addictive and have a much lower benefit to drawback ratio. Parents should be able to make this cost/benefit decision for their kids. I wish I could turn them off for myself. I settled on only using YouTube on my laptop because shorts don’t have the same appeal in that context.