Youtube and my kids

How we manage our kids access to Youtube

Published: Wednesday, Apr 5, 2023 Last modified: Saturday, Mar 23, 2024

If you goto https://families.youtube.com, as a Google One Premium subscriber I have:

  1. Daughter - Youtube kids profile
  2. Son - Youtube kids profile
  3. Son - xxx@gmail.com Supervised account

Btw your kids must be 13 years or older to enjoy any Google One Premium benefits.

Current strategy

The kids were introduced to YT kids via the iPad provided by my employer and they were instantly hooked. To combat them fighting over the iPad we have an alternate day rota, for example:

  1. Son - Monday
  2. Daughter - Tuesday
  3. Son - Wednesday
  4. Daughter - Thursday
  5. Son - Friday
  6. Daughter - Saturday
  7. No iPad

Previously we had it on alternate days (including Sunday), now we have this schedule which is less confusing.

Controlling screen time on the iPad

The iPad is in my son’s iCloud account, though it’s shared with my daughter and sometimes we parents even use it.

Screen time App Limits are:

Currently daily average is very close to 4 hours. Most used apps are:

  1. YT kids
  2. Roblox (mostly my son)
  3. Khan Academy (mostly my daughter)

Our parenting issues

Watch history

There doesn’t seem a good way to monitor what they watch on YT kids, at least we don’t where to see it.

For example when I goto https://www.youtubekids.com/settings I can clear watch history, but I cannot see the Watch history.

Note: You’ll need to use your child’s device to review their watch history. is the advice from https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172308 but often we do not have access to the kids iPad and Watch it again often feels broken.

Two choices from Google

Youtube help is terrible and the two choices:

Makes it very confusing. Google One support isn’t of help, they will want my kids to be 13.

LG TV

We don’t know how to limit the use of Youtube Kids on our LG TV. https://www.youtubekids.com/settings doesn’t appear to have the option.

Our current approach is to not let them watch YT kids on the LG TV anymore.

Xbox

There doesn’t seem to be Youtube Kids for the Xbox.