YouTube Finally has Parental Controls
YouTube Finally has Parental Controls
This has nothing to do with any of my normal content but I think this is a super important (weekend) topic for my (mostly) local parent audience
This is a completely off-topic post but I think it is important to spread the word to other parents of elementary school children about this new feature in YouTube that will change your life.
If you are a parent of an elementary school child (as I believe most of my readers are) you probably live in a world with the following problem:
My child wants to watch YouTube
YouTube Kids sucks and my kid won’t watch it
I’m OK with my child watching some YouTube (such as Mark Rober or Physics Girl) but it is impossible to control the garbage recommendations
For an eternity, YouTube had absolutely no form of parental controls. I discovered the other day that they finally do but it’s pretty hidden. It will allow you to whitelist specific channels and turn off the recommendation algorithm!
Here’s how to do it:
Make sure you setup a Google Account for your kid, separately from your account and have linked them to you in Google Families
Remove YouTube.
Add the YouTube Kids App.
When you’re setting it up, you should be able to link it to your account.
Pick the setting for their age group, this will make sure they have access to the boring videos they don’t want to watch.
Here’s a video on how to do that part:
The Most Important Part
From your phone, inside the YouTube App you can “Share” an entire channel with them. There is a whole flow that will allow you to pick which child. See below is how it works from my phone.
You click:
Share Video
Then click “With Kids”
Then click your Child’s account
Note: this will ONLY work on the YouTube Mobile app
Then this entire channel will show up in the YouTube Kids app your child uses. They will be able to watch just videos on this channel and other ones you approve. There is no recommendations sidebar anymore and they will no longer be able to surf the YouTube wasteland.
Can we disable YouTube on the District 65 devices?
It is appalling in my estimation that elementary school students are issued computers and iPads.
Like many things with the District, the oversaturation of these devices has ben done without any consultation with parents and, as far as I know, there is no evidence that any possible educational benefit outweighs the addictive and distracting nature of the devices.
I find it very hard to stomach an argument that any person younger than 11 needs a computer for school.
My fifth grader can barely write with a pen and paper and there is no worksheets and the like coming home. The apps they use for math are ridiculous and no better than learning equations. I’ve had to teach these things myself to the kids and they are way beyond the stuff on the apps.
The other thing is that these devices are probably a decent chunk of the budget. At our school the hapless principal asked parents to tell the kids not to use the computers while they are waiting in morning for the school doors to open. Apparently the kids were dropping them and getting dirt in the and damaging them. How about not sending them home with the kids?
Then there was the time they wanted me to pay for a laptop charger my son allegedly lost. I told them “ no way, you made the unwise decision to give an 8 year old a computer. I never agreed to be responsible for it.”
If you look in the last Curriculum committee meeting of the Board there is a report hidden in there related to their technology policy.
You will not be surprised to know that they retained a consultant to do an assessment of tech in the district. Absolutely none of the work they have done so far suggests a critical eye towards its use.