I have three boys, aged nine, five and one and given a choice, all they?d ever do is watch YouTube. (OK, maybe not the baby, but give him a week.)
I?m not exactly sure when this happened. One day it was all Paw Patrol and Pixar movies, then suddenly they were obsessed with a vlogger named Dan with blue hair and two pugs who spends his days playing Minecraft while shouting, ?Epic man!?
The boys? obsession with Dan became so mono-maniacal that I announced a YouTube fatwa, deleted the app and uploaded its sweeter, cuter younger sibling: YouTube Kids, feeling smug in the knowledge I could now let the boys languish with the iPad unchecked while I cooked dinner in peace.
Well no, as it turns out. Just when I thought it was safe to listen to the six o?clock news while chopping an onion, it has come to my attention that YouTube Kids is neither safe nor trustworthy, despite its ?family friendly? description on the App Store.
Just to be clear, I am not the kind of mother who slices grapes or sterilizes bottles (literally, not one ever). I?m pretty impervious to maternal anxiety in part because I believe so firmly in the robustness of my kids? bodies and minds. Where other, more vigilant parents might look at the iPad and see a world of danger, I have always seen 30-to-60-minutes of blissful, silent free time. By extension, you will never find me ?co-watching? children?s programming with my kids, since to my mind it defeats the purpose of iPad time entirely, which is this: Everybod...