how bad is youtube?

jannie

trying to survive....
My 10 1/2 year old saavy child is quite interested in youtube. He's recently come home from a friend's house and shown me videos..that are not really appropriate for him. He thinks they are soo funny. Anyway--how bad is Youtube? Do I need to block it entirely? Also, I've yet to figure out how to actually work the parental controls !!! Yikes !! This is happening way too fast.

He loves the humor of the Simpsons and more recently The Family Guy. I watched the Family Guy with him the other day and it is so not appropriate...yet he thinks it's hilarious !! Should I ban this too?

What's worse Youtube or Myspace???

What do you think?
 

meowbunny

New Member
Myspace is ten times worse in my opinion. My daughter's 20 and I still flinch when she goes on there. MyTube can be very good or very bad. It just depends what you look at. Much of it is hysterical. I haven't seen anything really obscene there, yet.
 

OpenWindow

Active Member
I have parental controls set to approve sites difficult child goes to. He can't go to any I haven't approved. I blocked YouTube because there's no way to prevent him from getting to the really bad stuff. He outsmarted me, though. I approved Google for him so he could do searches - I figured he couldn't get to any sites anyway so it was safe. He figured out he could search Google videos and view them. Now Google is no longer approved.

My difficult child loves the Simpsons and Family Guy. in my opinion Family is much worse than the Simpsons, and he's never been allowed to watch it. But, he's now banned from Simpsons because he likes to imitate what he thinks is funny. So he can't watch Simpsons until he can control that and not be rude.

On the other hand, easy child#1 and easy child#2 can watch those shows and not act out because of it. They are allowed to watch the Simpsons, easy child#1 can watch Family Guy but has no desire to. easy child#2 is still too young for it, in my humble opinion.

If difficult child had a MySpace, I'd be checking it daily. easy child#1 has a page and I check every once in awhile (have never found anything I object to). No one can see his page but friends, and he doesn't allow anyone to be his friends that he hasn't met in person.
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
I haven't seen enough to comment on youtube.

But in my opinion Family Guy is not something I'd have let my kids watch until they were in their mid teens. Just a bit too explicite for me.
 

mstang67chic

Going Green
I would block it just for the simple fact that you can't set limits on the site. I haven't seen anything obscene on there either but there's a lot of stuff that's probably not kid (and especially difficult child) friendly. If you're there with him, fine. You can control what he searches for. Otherwise, no. It's not a bad site all around......there are a lot of funny and cute stuff on there. But like I said, there is just no way to set limits on the site itself.
 

smallworld

Moderator
My son makes his own movies and downloads them onto Youtube so the site is obviously not blocked on our computer. His movies are clean but very slapstick and silly.

He also loves the Simpsons and watches the show every night. The girls do, too. We don't watch Family Guy.

No one in this household has asked about a MySpace account so I'm not about to mention it. I dread the day when they do because I just don't want to go down that road with my kids.
 
Myspace is scary because you never know who is out there posing as a youngster, trying to befriend your child. It needs to be monitored for young kids and people with poor decision making skills because there are stalkers and pedophiles everywhere.

YouTube is not a site to meet people. However, there is nothing to block the over 18 section of videos that they have for viewing, and some of the family safe ones are dicey at best.

I do not think that Family Guy is appropriate for young kids. I do not let my daughter watch it.

How you set the parental controls depends on how your computer is set up. Like what is your operating system, which browser do you use, etc. For now, if you like, yo could go to where you set your screen saver and make that password protected. This way every time the screen saver kicks on, you need a password to escape.

Just a thought. Hope this helps.
 
F

flutterbee

Guest
Fortunately my kids aren't interested in having a MySpace account which is good cause they're not allowed.

difficult child did start an argument with me one day recently about not being allowed to have one only to turn around and say she doesn't want one. :faint: And we wonder why some animals eat their young.

difficult child does go to YouTube. She's pretty good at self-monitoring. I hope I'm not wrong in that assessment. I do check her history every once in a while and she's not done anything to make me think otherwise.
 

mrscatinthehat

Seussical
At 10 1/2 I think I might block it. Too many things you might not want him to see on there. For the most part it isn't too bad but some are.

Beth
 

witzend

Well-Known Member
They're both as bad as you let them be. He's 10? That's too young to be on the internet unsupervised. You should talk with his friend's mother and tell her that you would rather that he did not visit youtube or myspace without a responsible adult present to guide him.
 

drained1

New Member
k, i am new here BUT....stay away from myspace when it comes to your difficult child's. i monitored my difficult child on it and she has repeatedly blocked me. myspace does nothing when it comes to you reporting underage useage, i think all they do is look at the profile and see the "age" and assume all is right as rain. NOT

youtube i think is funny but one of those sites u still need to be careful with any kid. we have a computer that everyone has their own account, i block it from theirs, dont need easy child's learning how to make a bomb and turn into difficult child's. but when easy child's wanna go on and if i feel like clicking for 30 min or need a good slapstick laugh i log onto my account and we do together. its a comprimise and its working.
 

Lothlorien

Active Member
I would definitely not allow him on Youtube. I have checked it out and founnd some really cute and funny animal videos and such, but there are quite a bit with violent acts (the news has caught several kids beating other kids up on there, plus didn't the guy from VA tech upload videos before his slaughter spree?) There are also videos on there of girls passed out drunk with half their clothes missing and worse.
 

Marguerite

Active Member
OK, big cultural differences here.

Australia's internet is expensive. If you're on dial-up, your modem will be too slow to access anything complex like youtube, with anything approaching workable rates. And on Broadband, just about everybody is too expensive (in terms of us having a monthly limit which would prohibit regular downloads from youtube).

Especially in our family. So except for really big exceptions, the kids are not permitted to download youtube at home. This goes for everybody, regardless of age. ME and husband too. We also have Uncle installed to monitor downloads, hour by hour.

"Family Guy" - the kids love it. All mine are adults except for difficult child 3. He doesn't like to watch anything, but because he's wandered past a few times when the others were watching, he's now picked up on "Family Guy" a bit.

And we let him watch it - we would ban "South Park" because it's too socially unacceptable with the language and especially the verbal abuse apparently for its own sake.
With difficult child 3, we make sure we see it as well and we talk him through it if there's anything questionable in it. We explain stuff, anything we think is perhaps a bit too confronting he usually doesn't 'get' anyway. But it does allow us to explain satire, humour, appropriateness, various aspects of sex and sexuality (and again, appropriateness) and we sometimes even role-play what he SHOULD do in a situation the characters are in. difficult child 3 is highly moral, he can be very disapproving if he feels the characters are making bad decisions. But in this way we've been able to check his level of understanding as well as use the opportunity to keep him informed about things like homosexuality, surrealism, bullying (and further social implications) etc. It provides a discussion focus for us.

Our attitude is probably fairly typical of a lot of Aussie families. Aussie TV has different standards; a lot of our TV comedy is similar in degree.

An example from days gone by - remember "Solid Gold"? and "I Dream of Jeannie"? Back when it was screening first time round, we saw it in Australia too. We also had our own pop music TV shows, first "Bandstand" and then "Countdown". On both Bandstand and Countdown, we might see dancers wearing bikinis. Low cut, with plenty of skin showing. The bottom of the bikini were hipster pants which covered the buttocks but were way below the waist. I was a teenager then and my parents let me watch Countdown. They didn't like the music but were not offended by those bikinis.

Solid Gold was a different matter - my parents took one look at the Solid Gold Dancers, whose bikinis were waist-high pants but G-string at the back. And they turned off the TV saying, "That is disgusting!"
I Dream of Jeannie, at that time, had Jeannie in a waist-high costume that did not show her navel.

It just seemed weird to us, that navels were bad, and buttocks were OK (apparently, in the US) while for us, navels were perfectly OK but rear ends had to be completely covered.

We often see US celebrities totally taken aback by what is acceptable on broadcast TV. Often the US celeb keeps on talking "dirty", confident that OF COURSE none of this is going out to air, because it sure wouldn't in the US - to find that it IS, and we're loving it. British TV is very similar to ours - we've seen some wonderful stuff on Parkinson, for example, where the visiting US celeb says, after a British comedian guest has just said something outrageous, "Surely you can't say that on television, can you?"

Don't get me wrong, our censors are very much alive and kicking, it's just that the standards are so different. We can be very prudish about some things. Just not the same things, apparently.

That's why I try to be careful on this site. I'm getting better, I don't get it wrong as often these days.

Marg
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
As others have said, YouTube is as good or as bad as you make it. There is so much content on it that's cute and perfectly appropriate for younger children, and there's so much that's inappropriate.

I think the answer is simply not to let younger children use the computer without supervision. Our computers are in "public spaces" in the house, where we can see what's on the screen at any time.

With regard to MySpace, Facebook and those other social networking sites, in addition to the danger of predators and other people misrepresenting themselves, there's also the danger of online bullying and stalking. When difficult child's friend created a Facebook account for him last year, husband got his username and changed the password. So...difficult child was only able to use Facebook if husband logged him in, and he was under direct supervision the whole time. This way, we could also log in and monitor difficult child's activity on Facebook, and shut it down if anything inappropriate was going on.

I think trying to restrict access to specific sites gets very complicated, so I prefer to just be there whenever my little ones are using the computer.

Just my $0.02.
Trinity
 

jannie

trying to survive....
Thank you all for your feedback. My day has been so busy this is the first time I've been able to check in. My son does not know anything about MySpace. I was just asking for a comparision because I've never visited either site. I mostly monitor him on the internet, however, he is generally just playing games.

I tried setting up parents locks and I was surprised that youtube was not blocked. I will have to enter it as a specific website that my child is now allowed to view.

This week he's been playing backyard football on the computer and not even asking to use the internet.

They grow up so fast !!! I did not allow him to attend a sleepover this past weekend as I was quite concerned there would be unsupervised computer time.

Thanks again-
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
My son (when living at home) had limited computer access at 16 BECAUSE we found disturbing porn sites popping up. What really did it for me was the day he ran away, we called the police. The police asked if I knew of any house he may go to, and I got on the internet in my home office to look up the name etc. The cop followed me into the office - and when I turned it on and went for a search a womans huge and I mean HUGE naked behind with sound effects and all popped up on my screen. It's as close as I've come to being embarrassed in years. The cop just smirked.

I set up a long desk in my office with a router and 2 computers. When I was on line- difficult child could sit right next to me and be on line. THere is NO WAY in THIS WORLD that I would allow my son to be on line unsupervised. We were shocked at the amount of filth he had found - and not so amazingly the kid who told him about all these sites was sending the info through MY space. It was also the child that had been arrested in connection with the house burglaries difficult child was involved in. I asked his mother if she was aware HER 13 year old son was looking at this mess and her comment was - "He's got to find out about it somewhere." ARGH - absentee brain= absentee parent.

I found the MySpace site my son had created with the help of this kid. It was well put together - colorful, music. I was surprised my son could do this. Then I found out when they had a falling out - the other boy that had helped him changed his site to very disgusting things. difficult child was so angry - we had to email MYSpace and get the thing removed - it took almost 3 weeks. Some of the pictures that difficult child had put on there - were of us at the rifle range - so THOSE pictures with guns were naturally picked which meant that now the entire free world KNEW what we had in the safe at home. AND he posted pictures of our dogs - again - now everyone KNEW what beautiful dogs we had, and you only need to ping an internet address to get a neighborhood location - drive around and BAM - house robbery, dogs stolen.

The cops told us that MySpace was a nightmare for them. They get at least 20 calls a DAY in their small office about it. TWENTY? From parents who are not savy enough to keep up with whats going on. And kids lie when they put their ages in there. Or they don't know about internet perverts and put ALL their info, pictures of the inside of their house (there's the layout for a robber) and in pictures things are in the background that give you insight to what the people are like. To a seasoned robber - it's heaven.

Since my son has been out of the house I did an internet search based on his email address and found a new MySpace page he's created. I got suspicious when he said he wanted some NEW pictures of our dogs. We have bulldogs - they are big, and fierce looking. And like I said before - they were VERY popular on the internet with difficult child accepting EVERYONES invitation. So I asked him what he wanted the pictures for and he said that the scrap book I made him got ruined in the flood they had. ??? Red flags went up and he was trying to rush me for them. So it prompted me to do an internet search and I found his MYSpace account.

This time the site just portrays and interest in Rappers - and Bling....some rap music (song is pretty vulgar) but no pictures of MY furry kids. Apparently he has no access to a scanner because you and I both know those pictures didn't get ruined in a flood. But the catch is - If I want in to see what else he has on his site - I have to make myself a profile - and don't know that it's all that important to me to be a 17 year old hottie and hear what language he may use with young women - so I haven't done anything yet.

As far as Family Guy goes - it's not for kids AT ALL. We don't even watch it because it's content has been more and more over the edge. I just don't care to watch anymore. It was sorta cute with Stewie at the beginning - but the story lines aren't even good anymore.

And the Simpsons - Seems they've toned it down from what they used to be or maybe I'm just numb to the amount of shocking and eye opening things the world is offering any more. I never allowed difficult child to watch it because I already HAD a kid who had bad behavior and he came from a dysfunctional family. I didn't need to fuel the fire so to speak. When he got older 14-15 we let him watch it, but the thrill was gone.

I'm glad there is a writers strike - maybe people will get bored with TV and start being active outside, or doing things with their families again.

Hugs
Star
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I havent been on utube because I am on dialup and it would take me days to download anything. Maybe if I ever get into the 21st century I can actually go take a look...lol.

I have a myspace and Jamie and his wife have them. The only thing on mine is pictures. I dont use it for anything but keeping in contact with a few people. I certainly wouldnt have allowed my young teens to have one. I can see it would have been a nightmare when Cory was that age. Oddly enough, Cory was my internet nightmare kid when he was young but he hardly touches it anymore. He plays a game or two on Pogo maybe once a month or looks up something in the phone book or for a job...but he never chats.

This from my little sex pervert at 12 and 13!
 

Star*

call 911........call 911
OMG JANET!

When I started finding junk like porn on our computer ~ honest to Pete I thought of you and Corey. OMG - and now he has little to do with it? OH THANK YOU! Your post gives me hope.
 

4sumrzn

New Member
MySpace....NO WAY!!!!! easy child did set up an account awhile back & I found out about it through parental controls. I spent 3 hours that night checking out everything I could find.....all about what he was typing & all about his "friends". Thankfully I didn't find anything on easy child's....just a pretty cool "set up". BUT, his friends....YIKES...my heart was coming through my chest, my face was on fire & I about puked!!!!! SO....NO MORE in my house & I did my best to inform all of the parents of his friends to check out their accounts. YouTube....I don't see come up on his parental report, so I haven't checked to see if he can access it & I will. BUT, Google videos is now on my list too....I'm glad I read that here. This Mommy brain is having a hard time keeping up these days!
 
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