YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same

Their point is that despite being the designers of such systems, they prevent their own children from using them. Akin to a drug dealer not consuming what he sells.

Although I hate social media with a passion and would be fine if the government banned it outright, I don’t think this is a fair reading.

Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework? Video game devs? Parents are supposed to help their kids limit their time in everything.

‘He stressed “everything in moderation”’

I would expect an x-ray technician to limit their kid's time in x-rays.

It doesn't mean kids should never get an x-ray.

Sometimes moderation means complete abstinence but generally not.

You cannot be serious with this comparison.

Breaking: Willy Wonka execs don’t let their kids eat unlimited amount of candy.

See how uninteresting and obvious that is?

Personally haven’t met any parents who don’t know this already.

The problem is childcare not knowledge.

>“We do limit their time on YouTube and other platforms and other forms of media. On weekdays we tend to be more strict, on weekends we tend to be less so. We’re not perfect by any stretch,”

>He stressed “everything in moderation” is what works best for him and his wife, and that extends to other online services and platforms.

>YouTube’s former CEO Susan Wojcicki, also barred her children from browsing videos on the app, unless they were using YouTube Kids. She also limited the amount of time they spent on the platform.

So they're not completely banning their kids from using YouTube. The current YouTube CEO uses a time limit. The previous YouTube CEO uses a time limit and limits usage to the YouTube Kids app.

Disclosure: I work at Google but not on YouTube.

My kids aren’t allowed on YouTube. I run a local system that mirrors approved channels to our home server and serves them through Plex. Creators lose ad revenue; that’s unfortunate. The alternative was nonstop ads on children’s content and a recommendation system pushing garbage. That trade-off was unacceptable.

> Do toy manufacturers let their kids play with their toys 24 hours a day and not go outside or do homework?

I bet toy manufacturers have never had to think: "is this toy bad for my child's development?"

could you highlight what in the original article made you think they were banning their kids from social media entirely? or were you trying to explain something else?

Really?

10 of the worst toys for your child’s learning and development:

https://ilslearningcorner.com/2018-12-learning-toys-10-of-th...

There are actually some pretty big risks especially in terms of like motor development, and considering now they’re adding a splash of AI to everything and a ton of toys have screens, well.

Those ads are optional. You can just pay for it. Its actually pretty good value for the money.

Edit: I forgot to mention Family Link. Once you have a family membership (maybe even before?) You can also use Googles family link to enable a restricted mode that hides adult content for specific accounts.

You actually get a pretty great experience for the whole family for about $20/month.

Then you'd be giving money to the Google company as well. You can also look up the content creators and donate directly.

Ads are only half the problem. The real problem with kids using YouTube is it's too easy for them to access any of the content on the platform.

If I could pay YouTube for the privilege of using an app where I choose exactly which videos are available, and no other video will ever appear on or can be accessed from that app, then I might pay for it.

IMO the only way YouTube can be kid-friendly is if there is an app where the primary utility is the ability to whitelist on a per video basis. There could be convenience methods like whitelisting an entire channel's videos with one action, but the whitelist needs to be built around a per video model.

Last I checked, they had nothing remotely like this as an option.

They prevent their kids from having unlimited time with YouTube. Does YouTube ever suggest that kids should be able to use it asich as they want?

That misses the point by a mile and a half: nobody let's their children eat unlimited amounts of chocolate. They do, however, let their children access Tiltok, Youtube, etc.

Is any YouTube bad for their child's development? Or just spending large amounts of time on it with no adult supervision?

Youtube Kids has this. You can turn on a whitelisted content only mode. Then only content you share with the kids account shows up.

Approved content only mode.

Only if your mental model equates youtube to junk food.

The issue is that the business models of these platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, tik tok) are based on maximizing engagement. And maximizing engagement in this context means spending ever increased amounts of time on one platform over another or over doing offline activities like reading a book and going outside.

So the tech leaders preach moderation but the design of all these apps are built to be addictive and to maximize the time that other people and other people’s kids spend on it. It seems to be poor kids who have overworked stressed parents who seem to spend the largest chuck of time endlessly scrolling on these apps harming their minds and mental health and so on

Same here as well as for other streaming. They want to watch the show more than a couple times, I’ll download it. No way I let my kids get brainwashed by these people with their weird algorithms they don’t understand themselves.

At which point I might as well put it on plex, same effort for tech savvy people.

Thanks, good to know. Either it didn't exist when I last tried to research it, or I just couldn't find it.

Will creators also serve you their content directly?

Plex + archive.org is the best. So many great kids shows on there to grab.

I always think if I had kids this is how I'd do it also. I'm an adult who I think has fairly decent critical thinking skills and also is familiar with the state of technology etc etc. Well, I was following the news on 3I/ATLAS and I caught myself watching a youtube channel that I genuinely thought was Michio Kaku, I'd heard him talk once and it sounded and looked like him, so I put it on, switch tabs and listen as I work. I didn't notice it was AI (in retrospect I should have) but after a couple of days of watching it, I started to think...either this guy is worse than Avi Lobe or this channel is fake, the channel was fake and the content was, probably.. 2 or 3 steps removed from reality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMAFnTANx6A / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXxGWD_dtL0 / https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=michio+kaku+3i+...

That’s because internet addiction isn’t sufficiently taken seriously as a society, even for adults. We haven’t fully adapted properly to this reality on a social level because it’s very new so people are panicking. It will eventually become standard parenting and as far as I can tell it already is becoming standard. More adults need to look at their own behaviour to fix their kids.

Every cellphone already comes with the ability to limit those things. It doesn’t require coming home from work early to toggle parental controls at a certain time.

Except that's not true. Plenty of parents let their kids have unlimited access to junk food and candy. Neighbor kids come over and they don't know what to do because I only have water, fruit, and pretzels. I have been to so many parent's houses who have whole pantries of just sugary snacks.

The GGP, not the original article, said "they prevent [emp. mine] their kids from using them".

What is your objection to paying for the thing you seem to enjoy using?

Most content creators I've heard of appreciate those who subscribe to YouTube premium. 55% of the cost goes to creators.

No this misses the point.

I wanted to eat unlimited junk food when I was a kid but my parents wouldn't let me.

You can change it even to unlimited protein shakes. It is the same point. It is almost like kids are kind of stupid if you let them do whatever they want.

> I run a local system that mirrors approved channels to our home server and serves them through Plex. Creators lose ad revenue; that’s unfortunate.

Have your home server note when the kids are watching one of your mirrored channels and launch a browser on a computer the kids cannot see that is watching the same video on YouTube without an ad blocker.

The video creators then get exactly the same ad revenue and view counts they would have gotten had the kids used YouTube.

And yet, would that be wrong?

Youtube is a grocery store. So yes, if you view everything coming out of it as junk you're ignorant and wrong.

And yet, when going to a grocery store where everything is free, what content would adolescents be most likely to consume?

Your analogy was more apt than you could ever imagine.

I can't speak for your adolescents, but my kids make generally good decisions. I don't relate to the kids are stupid automatons with no agency or valid opinion mindset that is so prevalent with HN contributors. If your kids would only ever pick junk food, maybe that is a reflection on you more than them?

I myself was recently an adolescent, and still know many adolescents myself. My take is coming from my anecdotal experience, and the behaviour I've observed from my peers. Perhaps your kids don't show that side of them in front of you? I know my peers and I certainly didn't go out of our way to advertise such activities to our parents when we were younger.

YouTube Kids has a built-in timer to limit the amount of time kids can watch.

https://www.youtube.com/intl/ALL_us/kids/parent-resources/

Regarding ads, wouldn't YouTube Premium solve that? Regarding recommendations, YouTube kids allows you to select certain videos, channels, or collections, and only allow your kids to view those that you've selected.

https://www.youtube.com/intl/ALL_us/kids/parent-resources/