Author Archives: Adam Gersbach

About Adam Gersbach

Adam Gersbach is a business coach who works with technology based business owners who are also parents. Adam has 5 children and lives with his wife Sally in the Blue Mountains, Australia.

The Problem with Letting Your Children Watch YouTube

There is no doubt that technology has changed the way we look after our children. Many parents use tablets, iPads, and mobile phones to keep their children occupied. It’s convenient, easy and it works. 

For many parents, gone are the days of humiliation and frustration caused from ‘those looks’ from others in the waiting room when their child talks too loud, runs around, makes high pitched noises, crying, screaming, and tantrums. It’s now quite common to see kids in waiting rooms sitting quietly with eyes transfixed on a hand held screen. 

YouTube is one of the most engaging places for children with an extremely large array of videos that are great for kids including pre school & early education videos, nursery rhymes, songs, cartoons, movies, even cooking tutorials for kids.

All this truly is wonderful but we can’t ignore that fact that there is a huge problem with kids using YouTube. Parents often forget that YouTube is an video sharing platform open to all with a tremendous number of videos that are most definitely not suitable for children. Some videos are even disguised as kids videos with ‘kid friendly’ titles and images.

Quick… Stop it! Close down, cover it up!

Imagine your child, while watching a video they notice a thumbnail image of that looks like fun. They tap to view and less than a minute of Peppa Pig dancing and singing it cuts to Peppa Pig being stabbed or cuts to an edit of inappropriate sexual behavior right before your child’s eyes. I’m sure that would horrify you sending shivers down your spine.

Allowing your child to use YouTube is risky even when you are looking over their shoulder at every moment. Unfortunately some parents have come across inappropriate content during direct supervision only to find it took too many seconds to prevent their child from seeing more. Sadly their child has already viewed enough to either become shocked, scared, or intrigued. As a responsible parent we just can’t take the risk.

Thankfully there are some great solutions.

There are apps that can be used specifically for kids that filter videos to ensure that inappropriate content doesn’t get in front of children. YouTube kids has been developed specifically for this purpose. If you let your child watch YouTube videos you should, at the very least use YouTube Kids which is available from the App Store and Google Play. The only issue with YouTube Kids is the videos are filtered by robots so some videos that we shouldn’t let our children view can get through.

Safe Vision is Safe!

Safe Vision is, as the name suggests, is safe. All videos and video channels are screened by humans not robots. Parents can also add videos and channels they know are safe. It’s the perfect solution to entertain with total peace of mind. 

You can install Safe Vision here…