App suggestions make it so hard to keep kids away from slop. I started out only letting my toddler watch PBS Kids programs and a few other educational programs, but then your kids start seeing suggestions for all sorts of shlock, and they want to see the show with the superhero kitties is (it's called Super Kitties and it is garbage). God help you if you try to watch something on YouTube; every suggested video is either low-quality home movies of people playing with toys (which is like crack to toddlers or weird shit like this that absolutely shouldn't be on YouTube Kids but often is anyway.

[–] Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Set YouTube kid to only show selected channels. My kid is actually bored of youtube now.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Holy shit, I did not know you could do that. That is going to be life changing.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Which channels did you select?

[–] Knoxvomica@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

We did some shows that we both liked, like bubble guppies, sesame street, ABC mouse, cool school, paw patrol, peppa pig. Then there's also some like packages that were okay like BBC and discovery kids, Disney channel. The most brain rot one we let them keep watching was pinkfong (baby shark).

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So don't give a tablet then. Or if you do, don't have Apps like that. Get an wifi only android tablet, install VLC and specific shows and games. Real games and real shows. Not short form shit or bs mobile "games".

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I don't give him a tablet, he only watches at home on TV (or a phone on very long car trips). I don't know a toddler parent that has the time to download a curated media library for their kids, and even if you do have the time, things like that fall apart eventually. My wife and I managed to avoid most crap TV until we wound up in a hotel room with two dead phones and a fussy toddler, and that's when we finally caved and put on Nick Jr. For a while, we managed to convince him that Paw Patrol was only available in hotels, but eventually he saw the thumbnail for it when we were trying to show him Dora the Explorer, and that beautiful lie finally died.

[–] Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Paw Patrol is a regular length cartoon with a real, albeit basic, plot. I'm talking Cocomelon or Five Finger Family or other short form shit.

I don’t know a toddler parent that has the time to download a curated media library for their kids

No. Curating what your child consumes, both dietary and cultural, is the basic requirement raising a child. It takes very little tech skills to download files and load them on a device. Even just an old school portable dvd player and a disc wallet is preferable. The point isn't to cut all media, but to cut the short form shit the drains attention. Even a show with a plot that takes ~22 minute to get to the end teaches some degree of patience.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Paw Patrol is empty calories. It doesn't teach emotional regulation like Daniel Tiger, or shapes and colors like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, or numbers, letters, and problem solving like Sesame Street. It's not harmful like Cocomelon, and I've accepted that my son loves it, but that doesn't mean it's good.

Curating what your child consumes, both dietary and cultural, is the basic requirement raising a child.

Yeah, I curate what my child consumes, thanks, I just don't have the time or energy to create a bespoke tablet of torrented kids shows to present him, or track down a circa-2002 portable DVD player and start a new physical media collection. If you've got that kind of free time, great, but I've just got to use the apps I've got, accept that he's going to want to watch some shows that I find worthless, and make sure he doesn't consume anything actively harmful.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Saying downloaded media or physical media collections are hard and fall apart is illogical considering that's how everyone on the planet used to engage with media before internet streaming became such a huge thing

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Except they didn't. They mostly watched live TV.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe that was the case where you grew up, the world is a large place and people live different lives, I grew up on bottleg and official CD's and DVD's, physical comics and novels, mp3 songs downloaded from limewire and torrented movies, friends and family would exchange flash drives and other media regularly for new content, all my content was both curated and organically found and diverse, and I consumed content from all over the world and my life was better for it. And I still rely on some of these methods to get my media, tech companies benefit from taking away ownership of things from people and packaging it as convenience, I'm not falling for that, I'm building my own home server now to host my own open source apps and services, it's not even that difficult anymore.

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I was a teen in the early 2000s too. Most people still consumed most of their media through live TV. Anyway, you're right, I should build a home server and start burning my own torrented DVDs. That's the only reasonable solution to, "apps suggest crappy shows to my kid," and it's definitely the thing a parent of a toddler has the time to do.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago

Ted Ed, Vsauce, CGP Grey.

[–] BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

So them put some effort into acquiring good health media for your kid to watch and put that into the tablet and remove all other apps so they can only engage with content that has been pre veted by you, parenting takes effort

[–] pjwestin@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, thanks, I'm not looking for notes.