This may be a slightly odd question: Do you differentiate types of screentime, even just in your head, into good, bad, VERY bad? For example, do you extremely limit social media for your kids? If you do limit social media, HOW do you do it (particularly once the genie is out of the bottle)?
I just saw The Social Dilemma, the documentary on Netflix that pretty much all of my mom friends are talking about on Facebook, and I’ve reassessed some of my thoughts on screentime and social media — so I thought it might be interesting to discuss here.
{related: here’s our last discussion of screentime rules that work}
If you haven’t seen it, The Social Dilemma is a really watchable documentary that talks a lot about social media, and particularly the algorithms that select what content you see and what content is recommended to you, as told through interviews with people who used to work for Google, Facebook, YouTube, and other companies.
As The New York Times noted:
[C]onscientious defectors from these companies explain that the perniciousness of social networking platforms is a feature, not a bug. They claim that the manipulation of human behavior for profit is coded into these companies with Machiavellian precision: Infinite scrolling and push notifications keep users constantly engaged; personalized recommendations use data not just to predict but also to influence our actions, turning users into easy prey for advertisers and propagandists.
You can watch the trailer on YouTube, view the documentary on Netflix, read a review with takeaways at Business Insider or The New York Times. (Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 87% fresh rating!)
As a mom to a 6-year-old and a 9-year-old, we haven’t yet hit the era where we have to worry too much about whom they’re chatting with — and I’ve always known to not let them play online games “with strangers,” if that makes sense. My 9-year-old does play Fortnite with a few of his friends, but it’s just them; there’s (as yet) no other social aspect to his gaming.
The big exception for both of my kids is YouTube. My eldest loves to watch gamers like BaronVonGames, while my youngest loves more abstract things like dominoes.
I have a memory from when my eldest was about 2 years old and really into Thomas the Train; he somehow found his way to YouTube videos that were in POV-shots of adults playing with the toys, describing their actions in another language (Spanish? Russian? I honestly don’t remember). Thomas apparently got into a fight halfway through the video with another of the trains because there was a lot of angry-sounding screaming. CHILD, I asked, WHY ARE YOU WATCHING THIS? He honestly had no idea.
So I’ve always MEANT to limit YouTube. But… somehow, over the years, the YouTube consumption has crept up. (In fact, since the pandemic started, our screen time limits have in GENERAL been out the window.)
(TRIGGER WARNING: mentions of suicide and animal cruelty) Yes, I’ve heard about people sticking sex or suicide scenes in the middle of Minecraft mod videos (I have to find the link for this!), and just seeing the creepy doll from the Momo suicide game of a few years ago is enough to make me shudder. (Oh, and a friend just posted on Facebook about how her 8-year-old daughter was seeking a “crunchy slime ASMR” video to help her fall asleep and accidentally found videos of someone driving over a cat or something else depraved and criminal?!?)
Seeing The Social Dilemma made me think of all of those fun tidbits from the past; the documentary also educated me further about how the algorithm really is designed to take you down crazy rabbitholes.
After seeing The Social Dilemma, I put my “dictatorial mom hat” on and decided, THAT’S IT. We’re severely limiting unsupervised YouTube viewing. (Which, just to be totally clear, means we are severely limiting YouTube viewing.)
I broke the bad news to my kids, explaining they could still have a LOT of screentime — playing games (particularly with friends!), watching television, talking to Grandma on FaceTime, and more — but that YouTube would be super, super limited.
I think the hardest thing for my oldest one to understand is that I’m not worried about the content he INTENDS to consume (I mean, sometimes BaronVonGames can be a little shrill/excitable in that young-guy-playing-a-video-game kind of way, but hey), but rather the places the algorithm may take him through suggested content.
I’ve currently allowed each kiddo 30 minutes of browser time (total) on their personal computers that we monitor through Microsoft Family. It is a buggy program and not at all perfect, but we’ll try to write a post soon on how to set that up.
Their iPads make it much easier to monitor screentime — again, I’ve blocked the browser to 30 minutes a day since both were only using the browser to watch YouTube videos. (We haven’t allowed them to download the YouTube app.)
Unfortunately, as a lot of elementary-school parents have noted, a lot of teaching materials assigned by their teachers are on YouTube — so we can’t block YouTube entirely, even if we could access those controls on their school-provided Chromebooks.
A few notes, just since I suspect people might ask about them:
- Yes, we know, there’s YouTube Kids — neither of my kids has ever found content they’re actually searching for on there.
- Apparently, one way to try to confuse the search engine is to not sign in to YouTube so you can’t be tracked — but one of my “supervisory techniques” (lol) is to sign both kids into a burner account that I use so I can review their viewing history.
- We bought a Circle many years ago (three or four, honestly) and at the time I wasn’t thrilled with the extent it inhibited my own social media viewing (yes, yes, I know, but I’m a blogger!). I’ve been meaning to look into it more; I understand there are also ways to limit media consumption at the WiFi level through a router like Orbi or Google WiFi. (It’s on my list of things to investigate; if any readers have opinions on it I’d love to hear them!)
- If you’re not familiar with it, Common Sense Media is an amazing organization doing a lot more in-depth thinking on this stuff; here’s their parental guide to YouTube.
So, readers, over to you — do you limit social media for your kids, such as YouTube? What are your favorite ways to effectively stop them from going on YouTube or social media?
Anon says
Good topic – I hope we’ll keep visiting it.
We’ve fallen into the habit of allowing 30 minutes of ipad or video games each weekend morning, after they clean up something. We also frequently allow them this time after school. (Kids are 5 and 7.) I don’t love it, because, yes, it is mostly unsupervised. But we have allowed this for quite a while, and haven’t seen any suggestion that the kids have run into anything more than gamers who use a few PG words. But yes, it’s not great.
My younger one does seem to see a lot of toys that she wants, which I guess isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s a little jarring to see her start going nuts over something that she saw in a video. There hasn’t been anything to suggest them communicating with anyone, but obviously, that’s a matter of time. I’d definitely like to see more about what others are doing as the kids reach the ages where they can start “chatting” and whatnot.
(And to think, my parents used to worry about too much Nickelodeon.)
Anonymous says
I mentioned the other day that I’m old and paranoid when it comes to technology, but we mostly do DVDs at home. I own a fair number of kids movies on DVD, and I also don’t really care if my preschooler watches “adult” movies so long as they don’t have violence or graphic s*x. She watched 30 minutes of the Steve Carrell-Anne Hathaway Get Smart the other day – I don’t think she followed the plot at all but based on how much she was laughing she seemed really entertained by it. We also get DVDs out of the library. When we travel, we have an iPad we download TV shows and movies onto for her. During lockdown we did some Peppa Pig on YouTube but only supervised and even there I didn’t love how much she was entertained by the ads. No unsupervised YouTube now or for the foreseeable future.
Anonymous says
I don’t sign in to YouTube, but it still manages to track me.
layered bob says
My kids are all under 6. They can watch pre-selected episodes of vintage Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street on our AppleTV-connected TV or iPad on weekends or on trips. We use guided access on the iPad so they cannot navigate away from the episode we have selected. No social media or YouTube or anything else whatsoever.
We feel pretty strongly about no social media and only pre-screened media for our young kids so we send them to a small private school that requires parents to agree in writing not to give their children phones or social media accounts until at least age 13. The school checks in several times a year to emphasize that younger children should not have more than a few minutes of supervised screen time on school days. Of course the school can’t actually control what parents do at home but the written covenant does select for ideologically-similar families.
DH’s undergrad degree was in media production, he was a pretty serious gamer and he has previously worked in app development. So I guess we fit with lots of other no-tech/no-social media families where the parents have a tech/app/media background.
Anon says
Interesting topic! My kids are 4 and 1 and we have very restricted screen time. Facetime calls to Nanna and Pops are daily occurrences and if I take a picture of them, they like to see it. But other than that, no daily screen interactions. Last winter, the older one watched a couple episodes of kids TV and a couple Disney nature docs. I found that immediately the whining for TV increased, so I just stopped and now it’s not even an option. This winter though, screen time may make a reappearance, especially with limited ability to go out and do things. We listen to lots of music though.
Strategy mon says
We fully eliminated YouTube last month – they can watch Netflix and disney + but the content on YouTube was just mind numbing and they would watch for 30 seconds before clicking to another video – no storyline or value at all. My 5 year old loved ninjago and the lego shows, but I recently decided those are only for weekends when watching with a parent who is paying attention – they are Y7. He didn’t push back even though he is obsessed and I kind of think it’s because he realized it was too grown up for him
eh230 says
My kids are 7 and 10. We allow YouTube, but loosely monitor. If something is not appropriate, we block the channel or tell the kids not to watch that personality anymore and explain why. I actually think the explaining is the most important part. Most of the time, the kids agree, and it empowers them to make better choices and take some ownership over their media consumption. The no screen time view is too extreme to me because we have to teach our kids how to live in the world and know when things are inappropriate. I liken people limiting to music censorship that we experienced as kids. By the way, I am a social media lawyer and my husband is a musician, so maybe this colors our view.
Jmd says
My kids are 9 and 11 and because I have worked in the social media industry, I banned YouTube before they knew what they were missing. So my advice is ban it while you can! They find plenty of other stuff to watch and play (Netflix, Disney+, switch games, Minecraft). But the internet really is Pandora’s box and with remote learning my kids somehow got access to text chatting through Messages on their macs, and they are group chatting with friends during class. We aren’t banning that, but I’m logged in as my son on my work computer so I can see the chats fly by.