So I downloaded a bunch of the videos on our desktop and blocked the site. Works for my 3.5 year old, not sure the plan when they outgrow it.

>So I downloaded a bunch of the videos on our desktop and blocked the site.

Downloading videos from youtube and blocking the site seems more like fighting against the platform (and more work) than turning on a whitelist mode. Seems like the end result is the same but with more work.

Even the sidebar of recommendations is a dark pattern for a 3 year old. Unlike Netflix etc where you have to exit the video to browse something else.

I miss portability of settings; configuring restrictions for an mdm is soul sucking.

Everything lacks the basics, and nothing reads system-level e.g. content rating restrictions, it's all per-service and per-device and it's maddening.

Worse, the single most-useful parental control possible, an allow-list, is often absent from TV interfaces and steaming services. Allow-list just the PBS app on AppleTV? Impossible, there is no way to do a case-by-case allow list. Allow-list only the handful of non-brain-rot children's shows on Netflix? Nah, it's just by age rating. Et c.

[EDIT] Our solution, after years and years of banging our heads against this? App-installation blocked everywhere, no YouTube on anything, all streaming services cancelled because they're such a pain in the ass, and the kids have a large curated set of pirated content served by Jellyfin that they can watch when they get TV time, including some things pulled from YouTube by yt-dlp. If we want to one-off stream something for the kids outside of that set of content, we "cast" it from a parent's device.

The non-piracy alternative would be to go back to discs for everything, I guess.

Standard ways of interacting with "modern" media services are just awful, if you're a parent. They're so bad that it's easiest to simply abandon them.

A family unit should own all accounts in the family, parents should be able to reset any password to any owned account from a central dashboard without hunting down email links and 2factor. I don't want to set up a management account for each service. I want all any services management options exposed by api and displayed in my central dashboard. Of my choice.

I don't know. I didn't ever have kids, but if I don't mind letting a $3k laptop wear a few battle scars just for it participating in the life of a photographer, I have to suppose getting a little dinged up to help make a child smile must be at least as honorable.

For that matter, I recall a ferret - now long since gone to her reward, of course, this was decades ago - jumping on an Esc key just in time to cancel a Windows 2000 install, and that was funny enough to laugh about for years. How much more so with a cheerful, clever baby primate? Don't mind me, though. Just getting a little maudlin in my old age.

Also, adults have lots of responsibilities other than making sure children are playing constructively. Requiring over-the-shoulder collaboration for all online activity isn't realistic, especially when you have more than one child per parent.

Banning youtube has been a no-brainer for me. The loss of the "smart" shows is a cost well worth reducing attention addiction.

3 to 4 year olds are still putting things in their mouth that they shouldn’t be.

In a village raises the kid scenario, there would be older kids and neighbors looking after the kid, presumably with good intentions since they are neighbors.

But in a world (the internet) where anyone from around the world can communicate any of their idea to everyone instantaneously, the village is no longer raising the kid, so village rules don’t apply.

Reminds me of the time I tried using pkunzip to expand a shareware demo and filled the C drive on accident.

You could be taught to use those machines respectfully, if you knew games were available.

What does a family computer with minimal internet access look like in the constantly connected modern era?

Download tools and selfhosted video streaming tools exist for YT content. I run them myself. I learned to set them up based on a couple of HN commenters' passing mentions that it was easier than I had made it out to be, by following search terms from their comments, and by screwing around breaking things till they quit falling apart on me.

In other words, old-fashioned sysadmin work, of the kind I loudly hate and quietly love to. In aggregate, it took about two days' (ie ca 16h though not as closely tracked as if billing ofc) work, and though my notes are aides-memoires in no fit state for publication, I would be happy to share them privately and save you some of that time.

(This offer stands for any reader, and my email is in my profile here; to see those, click on the name above this or any comment. My fifty-year-old, brilliant but determinedly nontechnical, beloved catty bitch of an ex-boyfriend had much derision for the content of my library, but none for the quality of service. I confide you won't disappoint your family too badly, either.)

eta: What I wanted to add is this, a short and I hope not too dull piece which I wrote now almost a decade ago. Please excuse the state you find it in; my old website broke ages ago and this needs a rewrite anyway for that the man proved far more vile than I yet knew to paint him. But I think it still can stand as a hint of my real feelings on these matters, which might surprise you somewhat. https://web.archive.org/web/20220125083230/https://aaron-m.c...

I cannot really explain to a non-parent how different the life of a parent is. We don't have the ability to sit down and do 16 hours of time in a project in 2 days.

It's nothing for example I would shy away from administering for my neighborhood, tenant per family or account per family or whatever people want in each their own case - in the same sense we share other resources as a community, from a drop cord to a car or a bedroom. Indeed I have no kids of my own in large part because I was terrified I'd be homeless by 50, if I did not focus on building the kinds of skills that make this something I can do in a couple days without mostly at any time putting in a lot of serious effort - this was second-screen stuff I did mostly in bed with a cup of one or another of the embarrassing milk-and-coffee concoctions I like.

I never knew what I would miss that way, focusing on building a reliably remunerative career instead of fostering any other kind of social connection, until too damn late. I don't need to hear (and won't receive well) anything like "it's never too late;" no one else here is competent to speak to my personal regrets, and I speak of this one here only so I can cite it as one motivation among many to try to do something with that so hard-earned skill that makes a difference for folks whose lives are embedded among those of others in just that way I never learned the hang of. What else could I do that's worth more?

No one is asking me to do that for my community, not at the moment. I don't know if anyone else here would think of it; one major reason I bought here is because I've lived here enough years to know it is mostly unattractive to tech people and fast becoming more so. That's good; no monoculture is healthy and that one metastasizes.

So sure. In theory I could build something like a Helm chart or deployable Compose file, or some such awful useless other shit that no one with a life could ever make heads nor tails of. Those are all things I wasted too much of my one and only mortal life learning how to do, but there are no tools we make that a human can use so just that alone doesn't work. So then I'd have to turn it into a business, and pitch to YC just so I could say they rejected me, and eventually Alphabet would sue me into my next incarnation for threatening one Ads PM's metrics bonus best case, and all I ever really wanted to do was help the overworked parents around me make their kids happy in a way that was safe.

To hell with all that, it's for the chumps here whom I grant are in the majority but do not mistake me for one of them. I said before if you want my notes you can email me and I'll share them, Docker Compose file and all; if you don't have time to act on them then you can try to find a friend or family member or neighbor who does, if you still remember how to speak to any such person. Or trade someone for babysitting so you do have the time. Or let your kids learn something about what Daddy does all day! And if you're embarrassed of that, well, maybe you should be. Unless you know some grave occult evil of Jellyfin or yt-dlp, I don't see why you'd feel that way, though.

Any of those you're welcome to by me, or whatever else you like. Not my problem, but for whatever you find it to be worth, I would say any or all of them seems a better use of your precious time than to waste more of it whining to me.

... there is no way in hell I'll give him or her access to the 'net. Right?

Right.

Personally, I worry about the mental models formed at an early age, and how distorting technology can be relative to the real world. It layers abstraction on top of abstraction on top of abstraction at a time when kids are trying to make sense of reality for the first time and establishing internal models that will stay with them into adulthood.

Sure, some carefully curated content may be fine, but I think there’s a deeper question to be asked about the impact of current technology on young brains. Adults certainly haven’t adjusted very well. The truth is, we don’t really know how harmful it is. Maybe we’ll survive the next 100 years to find out.

Everybody drinks alcohol. Should I help my toddler tryout alcohol to prepare to the future dinners, parties and weddings?

I didn’t want to drink before high school gatherings where there was peer pressure and I stopped shortly after that.

I see so many first-world westerners cringe at the idea of letting your child have freedom and make mistakes on their own. Tracking, parental controls everywhere, neighbors snitching when your child is out and about exploring the world, etc, etc.

Not that it means 2 year olds should run around the internet with unfettered access, but just that the aforementioned logic is not sound.

There is also benefit to being culturally in sync (not necessarily 1 to 1, but somewhat) with one’s peer group. It can be alienating to be the odd one out.

If it were up to my grandparents, I never would have watched a tv show or movie growing up, or read fiction novels. But while that may have had some benefits, it obviously would have some costs with me being unable to participate in some of my peers’ activities and conversations.

Same with many other things: condoms, keys to a car, access to alcohol. There is a time for everything, and at the age of 4, a young human probably has not yet maxxed out on analog stimuli opportunities.

I learned YouTube when it came out in 2006 and I was 21. I've got 19 years of YouTube experience and I'm doing fine. A 21-year old logging into YouTube for the first time in 2025 will probably be doing even better within days. (hours ? minutes ?)

I don't see any reason that a child needs "the internet" (for a value of "the internet" meaning "mass-market apps") to prepare for the future.

Maybe you'd want to give them "Scratch Jr"[0] at some point to give them a head start ; maybe that would make much more sense. But YouTube??

[0]: https://scratch.mit.edu/

While there are many formative opportunities about handling physical money (The sensation of exchanging physical coins is big on a kids mind or knowing they have money and having missplaced it), I can 100% see a case for a card instead, trackable, instant access to emergency money, etc

Side note: Just a few days ago I witnessed a mom letting her ~2 year old daughter browse TikTok while shopping groceries. The kid mindlessly swept to the next video every few seconds. I was horrified.

My first computer was at age 13 and I had internet (broadband, directly) at 20.

Now, obviously both of those are very late for 2025+ and social pressure would be overbearing.

But I think internet usage before, say, 7, is useless. There is so much to learn in the real world before that, anyway (outdoors activities including sports, books, card and boardgames, crafting, ...).

Thankfully I live in a place where they're introducing school bans for smartphones, total ones in primary and during classes in secondary. That should reduce social pressure massively.

If all goes well computers will be introduced around 7, supervised (probably with a locked down Linux and various educational programs, maybe some simple multiplayer games, etc). A dumb phone will probably appear in a few years and a locked down smartphone as late as possible, maybe around 12?

I expect mobile device mastery to happen almost instantly, instilling desktop computer usage is the real target, maybe some programming.

Unsupervised internet usage is a tricky thing. Not sure when exactly, they need to learn about NSFW and especially NSFL. And of course about the crack-manufacturers employed by FAANG.

YMMV.

Some develop advanced reading proficiency well before that, and the more they read the more likely that is to become the case.

Every child is different, but the more you assume they can't do certain things, the more you'll find that to be self-fulfilling.

(That said, that makes an argument for extensive access to reading materials, not videos.)