Hello, folks. Hoping I can get some opinions on my situation.
My 12-yo watches a lot of YouTube. It is mostly streaming personalities who have a lot to say on a variety of topics. I have either watched these videos with them, overheard them from another room, or looked some up from their history and viewed them myself.
I have problems with them and want to do something about it.
I care little about the topics being discussed; my child is allowed to be interested in their own things, even those separate from ours (their parents), and it’s also reasonable for them to disagree with us. All of that is fine.
My problem is with how these streamers present their content:
- They do not provide critical scrutinization of the issues.
- They do not apply logical rationalization or reason to the stances they take.
- They do not cite sources of repute to justify their positions.
- They are needlessly hyperbolic.
- They examine no dissenting opinions.
- They present themselves as authorities on every topic with zero credentials to support that assertion.
- They succumb to, support, and repeat what is obviously propaganda.
To say nothing of the fact that the value the entertainment potential and viewership counts more than the content of their arguments.
I was raised allowed to moderate my own content because I was trusted to be intelligent and wise enough to critically select what I watched or read and learn from the mistakes I made if I consumed something negatively influential. I have tried to extend this same trust to my 12-yo, but their constant repetition of what they hear and their inability to form a cogent argument makes me feel like their YouTube viewing habits are teaching them to accept concepts at face-value simply because they are popular.
I don’t feel it would be productive to start out-right blocking content and pundits because this would feel more hegemonic than educational. I’d rather increase the likelihood that they’d critique and dismiss the content than decrease the likelihood that they’d view it.
I would love to hear what others have to say about this situation.
I find starting a conversation with the kid when the opportunity presents itself organically and listen to what they think about the content / subject matter and bringing different perspectives to the subject can teach them critically thinking about what they’re hearing.
The same goes for young adult books with questionable relationship examples. Making it a conversation, hearing what they think about certain aspects and bringing different perspectives to the subject works better than taking a stance against something they love.
We all love flawed stuff, we love them while (hopefully) separating wrongs from rights in our minds because we have some degree of critical thinking. We just need to teach/guide the kids the same way. It’s ok to like something while still being able to point out the wrongs of that thing.
This is really great advice. I have tried this. They’re just at that point where they shrug or say “I don’t know” at everything, never engaging in any conversation.
Sorry for adding comment after comment, I’ve been in a position to talk to teenagers and experienced when they tune you out, when they’re interested in what you have to say.
I find it works best if you start with the positive. As adults, we should challenge ourselves to find the positive at times, since we tend to slide into correction mode without realizing.
Sometimes, we’ll start with positive and then talk about the part that’s problematic and why. Sometimes, we should just mention the positives, good examples, well thought out arguments, a good word choice etc. In fact, noticing and mentioning good examples will be the real game changers.
And be genuine, I cannot state the importance of this at all. Consider what your friend would think of the tone you’re about to use. If your friends would think you’re trying to preach, your kid will feel the same.
I agree with all of this. My issue is that the child in question literally will not listen to anything. They completely ignore heart-to-heart conversations, won’t take any advice, and don’t even acknowledge anyone is speaking. I’ve tried to use reason and logic but they just don’t care. I’ve tried to point out logical fallacy and they don’t get it. I’ve tried to show arguments being made with more cohesion and sound justification but they don’t care.
They just want to watch this garbage for entertainment. And that’s fine; I did the same thing. It’s just that this crap in particular is going to make them stupid and unable of critical thinking.
Or maybe something like “Language is such a funny thing. Did you notice they use X word to describe group A, but then use Y word while talking about group B. The media does that all the time, too. If you notice, you’ll find some very interesting extra stories they’re conveying” .
Bit of a gameplay, making the kids notice neutral words, judgement words.This may come back to bite the adult in the back when it turns on you, but hey, we want kids to be able to point out when we miss the spot, too.
Another option, how about just reacting to it at the moment when you hear something really jarring.
“Gosh, what a harsh thing to say/ harsh way to put it.”
“They’re dismissing this whole side of the story, that’s not a fair judgement at all”
“Behaving like the way they’re describing is the easiest way to lose friends. Friendships built upon trust and respecting the lines/boundaries of a person. Who wants a friend who does (breach of boundary example)”
"Can you believe this person is making such a big statement without a single proof? "
I’ve sat and watched it with them and said things like “That makes absolutely no sense,” “All of that was incorrect,” “None of that is supported by any evidence,” and such. They just figure I’m a stupid adult and ignore everything I’m doing.
That’s why I mentioned the “organically coming up in conversation” part. Keeping the didactic tone out of the conversation, finding a genuine interest in the topic ourselves usually important.
“I like how [internet personality] put it but I can’t help but wish they also considered this aspect.”
“I used to think like that at one point, but then I’ve come to know how it really worked in real life and that changed my view”
“Interesting point [the internet personality] made, though just last week I’ve heard of this news/story/experience of (a friend, relative, random stranger), that made me think that is only one side of the coin” etc…
Bingo.
The key is to start this conversation from the beginning with anything/everything.
This situation you describe is legitimately one of my greatest fears as a parent. I have little useful advice to give; all I can really say is “good luck” and to research terms like “elsagate,” “gamergate” and “PewDiePipeline” to see what advice actual experts (psychologists etc.) have about deprogramming kids from them.
I was raised allowed to moderate my own content because I was trusted to be intelligent and wise enough to critically select what I watched or read and learn from the mistakes I made if I consumed something negatively influential.
I was raised allowed to moderate my own content because my computer-illiterate parents had absolutely no clue what the Internet was capable of exposing me to. Frankly, it was only dumb luck on their part that I happened to have the right personality and skills not to succumb to inceldom, the Alt-Right, or some other kind of radicalization.
(Even more frankly, maybe I did succumb to radicalization: I am, after all, an urbanist leftist Linux user (among other weird things) who likes to hang out on Lemmy, LOL!)
Maybe try to show them videos you deem good and/or entertaining yourself. They might even prefer them over the videos they currently like, thus reducing the time spent watching “nefarious” content.
If they suspect that you want to stir them away, perhaps try manipulating the youtube algorithm by playing a lot of “good” or neutral content and engaging with them using their account so that different videos pop up in their daily feed lessening the echo chamber effect.
Ps: This is the opinion of someone who has no experience in parenting
How you interact with them is the key to 90% of what your child learns from you. You’re already participating in their viewing. Use this as a stepping stone for dialogue regarding plausibility, and demonstrating critical thinking.
“Do you agree with that influencer? Why or why not?”
“What are the influencers motivations?” Dazzle them with possibilities they had not considered too.
“If I told you I’ve been to space would you believe me? But I’m your parent! Why is my claim beyond belief?”
“Can you verify what that person is telling you through reliable means? This is how I would do that”.
… and so on. Just do more of what you’re doing and up the investigation portion IMO. Don’t be afraid to learn something yourself while they witness it. Just be careful to avoid arguments as they’re getting to that age…
I agree. The issue, however, is that they simply do not engage with any conversation. All I get is shrugs and “I don’t know” to literally anything I say. My latest idea is a litmus test I will reward them for taking which gives me an idea of their cognitive and critical thinking .
Keeping the tone casual and at their level should work better. If it sounds like an exam question or job interview, kids would find it difficult to engage. It’s a learning process for adults, too.
Thinking about our own childhood and how we would react to the critical thinking questions should help. Instead of a pop quiz sounding questions, we would prefer the adults talking to us to be genuine and not trying to lecture us, or test us.
You wouldn’t talk to your friend in a way “what’s the streamer’s motivations?” but you’d make a conversation out of it. “I was there with them right until they said this…” And you’d state your reasoning. Think of it talking to your friend, but keep it 12 yo. level.
They are also 12–almost a teenager. They are moving into a phase where your opinion matters less and their friends start mattering more.
What you are seeing as a slow indoctrination by YouTube may be more of a social game to keep up with the same media their friends consume. Each regurgitated opinion probably lands a lot better in a group of their peers.
This is the future we’ve been growing into. Kids are just living in it.
I watch a few streamers too, and I highly recommend that you follow the ones your kids enjoy until the consequences start setting in. IRS trouble, broken marriages, terminated business deals…stream bros don’t usually live happy lives. Let your kid see the beginning in full, and then make sure they stay tuned for the end.
Boogie used to be the Mr. Rogers of YouTube. Now he’s a cancer faking lolcow who tattooed “liar” on his face, then was caught lying about that too. That is a story arc a kid can learn from. There are wolves in sheep’s clothing, and now we have the benefit of watching them get exposed live.
My son’s only 8 so I have no personal experience parenting a tween/teen. So take that into consideration with my advice.
How about the next time you’re watching with them, try this:
"I was raised allowed to moderate my own content because I was trusted to be intelligent and wise enough to critically select what I watched or read and learn from the mistakes I made if I consumed something negatively influential. I have tried to extend this same trust to you, but the constant repetition of what you hear and your inability to form a cogent argument makes me feel like your YouTube viewing habits are teaching you to accept concepts at face-value simply because they are popular.
If you will engage with me in a discussion on these videos, I’ll leave you alone and continue to trust you on this. However, if you continue to shrug and dismiss the conversation, I will have to consider blocking this content until you are ready to engage with me on a deeper level."
I know modern parenting advice tells us to prefer reward over punishment so if there’s a reward strong enough to motivate them to engage, go with that. But if punishment is a greater motivator, I’d say damn the modern parenting advice.
Well I wouldn’t accept “I dunno” as an answer any more. “you are old enough now that it’s time for you to know because if you don’t people will take advantage of you”.
Every time they say ‘I dunno’ demand a single page report on the answer complete with at least 2 sources. No TV/Phone/Whatever until it is done. They’ll stop uttering that real quick. The key is co-participation though. Telling them something is important is meaningless when compared to showing them it is important by sitting down and helping them figureidout.
I found blocking things is full on, time consuming and never really works effectively enough. There’s always a way to see things that you want to see and if its forbidden, the curiosity is stronger.
Preference is approaching conversation with the kid(s). Take some time to watch things with them. The kid needs to learn critical thinking using logic and reasoning. Teaching these skills, and to not take everything at face value is probably where I would direct my energies. Wish I had better advice, but harbouring good debate without getting too emotional/personal is a skill worth learning.
Perhaps I’m being too impatient. Just this morning I was watching with them a video where the pundit was complaining about people who do gender reveal parties for their babies. I turned around and asked “Does this person have any kids of their own?” and they said “No, why?” Didn’t see the connection. Didn’t pick up the absence of authority on the topic. Just wanted to watch because it’s fun to watch someone make fun of someone else.
It’d probably cause a lot of resentment, but I believe that cutting the cord is necessary, they could be on the path of far right radicalization pipe line, or far left pipe line. You tube algorithm always push more extreme videos. I’ve got a 4yo kid, and I dred the possiblity of him getting hooked.
Well that’s kinda what I was worried about; the structure of these videos tend to push the kind of absence of critical thinking necessary to make a good voter, to say nothing of the influences behind the pundits themselves.
I should clarify that I am not a parent nor a child psychologist nor anything else to that effect, I am only speaking from my own experience of being parented—
I remember being around that age and I had a similar problem of just watching absolute political slop on YouTube. My access to content was never restricted nor closely monitored, but when my mom caught me watching some reactionary bozo on occasion, she would just call it what it was — and then all of a sudden I found myself a lot less interested in that type of content. When she or others would point out the problems with what I was watching or the messages I got from the content, that showed me the “smoke and mirrors” of it. And insofar as I engaged in that content out of a desire to appear precocious… Well, realizing that I was manifesting the exact phenomenon that C.S. Lewis described in that famous quote of his about the “fear of childishness”, and that my attempt to convince myself that I was more grown-up than I really was was collapsing in front of me, I just felt ashamed — but very specifically not humiliated.
So I think the best thing you can do is to understand what role these streamers really play for the child. Because it’s probably not all wanting to be popular, it’s probably not all wanting to appear precocious, and it’s probably not all wanting to build an identity; just as it’s probably not all noticing the ways in which they’re genuinely getting screwed over, and acting on genuine frustrations, genuinely trying to understand why this is and what to do about it even with the limitations of their own lived experience; nor is it probably all learning about the world’s issues and wanting to do their best to be a good person even about things that don’t very obviously affect them personally.
Rather the child’s enjoyment is in all likelihood probably some sort of blend of these or perhaps other things. If you can determine the composition of the blend, you will know where to strike to most effectively reveal the “smoke and mirrors”, and make the child feel that sort of productive shame that causes actual self-reflection. You should aim to be like the elderly Hungarian-born immigrant saying “And that makes a difference, doesn’t it?”, if you’re familiar with that old propaganda film: shame is a negative emotion that makes one want to avoid the cause of the feeling, and it should be your aim to make the child identify the cause of the shame to be the shameful thing rather than the one shaming.
I trust that you’re on good terms with your child and only have good intentions, so I think that you will succeed. And of course I should reiterate that my own perspective is limited, and what worked for myself might not work for everyone.
I’d be interested in examples of what he watchs, it’s hard to know how to respond otherwise.
I think you’re probably worrying too much though, I watch all sorts of junk on YouTube largely because I enjoy finding out how other people think more than it constanrly changing my opinion - sure he’s young and doesn’t have the same level of awareness as an adult but also nothing in his life will actually matter for about 5 more years so a few bad opinions aren’t the end of the world.
When he says ‘I don’t know’ maybe you should believe that’s how he really feels, feed into it a bit and as painful as this might be for you admit that you don’t know either - life is full of confusing shit and honesty half the stuff I see I don’t even know how I feel about it or if it’s true, sane, or sensible. I’m sure he knows loads of interesting things going on in the world that you’re totally unaware of so let him tell you about it, be interested and accepting while in a non-dogmatic way rasising doubts where appropriate or simply tell a story from your own life that explains your doubts - not like ‘I’m old and know better’ but more friendly and demonstrating it’s normal to not know who to trust or what’s valid.
Positive reinforcement of doubt and distrust is important, demonstrate that you understand he’s learning about the world and its absurdities and complexities, laugh about some of it WITH him rather than making him feel like you’re saying ‘the stuff you watch is dumb and you’re dumb for watching it’ because understanding others is FAR more important in life than knowing the truth about obscure subjects, hard pill to swallow maybe but it’s true.
Your seven points you worry about are well and good but media doesn’t do that, politicians don’t do that, corporations don’t do that, life partners and lovers don’t do that, friends don’t do that, I bet YOU don’t do that… To live in this world we’ve got to learn how to take the important bits and leave the rest, we’ve got to learn why people do the things they do and that’s only possible with a big messy database in our heads of all the different types of people out there.
It sounds from the way you speak like you’ve given him a good grounding in logical, sensible, and scientifically literate discourse which is great but now his brain yearns to understand more of the world - why is everything so crazy and weird? why do people who seem nice sometimes do crazy and hurtful things? Why does this girl say such odd things, does she like me or hate me? These are questions you can only start to answer by understanding people and things you don’t believe in.
I listened to endless craziness like Alex Jones, 5Live, loveline, all sorts of brain rot shit - never once did I think Adam Carolla was anything but [string of words now forbidden] though he was funny, it was fun to listen to and entertaining, I learnt a lot about the world from callers and even Adam though he certainly never did a single one of your seven virtues.
Yes maybe the entertainment is more important than the content of their arguments, being able to know the truth is useful but being able to entertain friends, girlfriends, bosses and authority figures is what can turn a hard life into a great and easy one.
I think you’re probably worrying too much though,
This could certainly be true, but I prefer to think of it more as a prophylactic approach to critical thinking. These videos show viewers that it’s okay to form volatile opinions absent fact, critical thinking, reason, context, or application. I don’t want my child be trained to think like a Republican or a Christian.
When he says ‘I don’t know’ maybe you should believe that’s how he really feels,
If that’s how they really feel, then I want to encourage deeper thought into something before forming opinions on it. I want to train them to sort through their feelings on something and be able to come to a rational conclusion. If that’s not how they feel and this is just a cop-out to not have to discuss something with a parent (I’d bet my mortgage on this), then I want to discourage the notion that an excuse can be used for everything and the concept that nobody can be held accountable for their stances on something.
Your seven points you worry about are well and good but media doesn’t do that, politicians don’t do that, corporations don’t do that,
These are not excuses or explanations, these are problems.
life partners and lovers don’t do that, friends don’t do that,
Which may be the cause for much strive in social interactions.
I bet YOU don’t do that…
I do do that. I am a scientist and a philosopher. I believe in reason, rationalization, context, applicability, utility, and equality/equity.
we’ve got to learn why people do the things they do
People do things because they either 1) Have a rationalized reason for doing so (someone who has critical thinking capabilities), 2) they have an irrational reason for doing so (someone absent reason and logic), or 3) they have no reason for doing so (someone absent sanity or care/investment).
I listened to endless craziness like
It sounds like all these sources did nothing but build up their own disrepute, and you knew it. Entertainment factor, sure, but the only value you get from listening to this stuff is to understand their motivations. They don’t contribute any new information, and justifiable hypotheses, any authoritative conclusions; they only instruct their listeners in how to copy their behavior. Which is exactly why I don’t want my child exposed to such garbage until they’re capable of the critical thought necessary to spot the fallacies.
Yes maybe the entertainment is more important than the content of their arguments, being able to know the truth is useful but being able to entertain friends, girlfriends, bosses and authority figures is what can turn a hard life into a great and easy one.
I can see the point you’re trying to make but I have to disagree. I’d much rather be able to form a cogent argument that fosters profitable discourse than post an adequately funny meme without understanding why the joke is inappropriate.
Have you tried talking to them?
On numerous occasions in a variety of ways, yes.
Very tough situation, wish I had something helpful to share, but any chance you can nudge them towards well sourced, largely promoting critical thinking, but also entertaining videos?
https://youtu.be/rE3j_RHkqJc?si=4TIAOEJDIjPijGmP
https://youtu.be/m81q-ZkfBm0?si=we-Zqq4w4xXlLJrd
https://youtu.be/wmVkJvieaOA?si=XmKdb_fAW_sMGlkD
You will never be able to block them from viewing stuff they want to see. They’ll either do it through their friends devices, on other WiFi connections, or at school where networks are hilariously open or easy to bypass.
The best thing, and frankly the only thing you can do as a parent is to be engaged with them. Make them think critically on subjects, and if something they parrot back is nonsense, call them out on it. Cast that seed of doubt in their mind. If they choose to continue to watch stupid shit, that’s their choice, and it’s only worth stepping in if it’s actively dangerous.
Maybe this: https://tournesol.app/ could be of some help ?
