Parenting in Sussex: I am not okay with YouTubers being on Netflix

My children both like to watch videos on there when they’re having a bit of downtime. Do I wish they didn’t watch it? Sure. But I have also come to accept that it’s a huge part of the modern world and they would be in a small minority if they didn’t have some exposure.

And so I do what all ‘good’ parents do: monitor it as best I can, use parental filters and, every few weeks or so, have mild-to-moderate panics about their brains turning to mush.

I like to think of it as the YouTube cycle, and I know I’m not alone in having a love/hate relationship with the platform.

There is good to come from YouTube. There are genuinely insightful, educational and engaging videos on there. But there’s also dark stuff, misinformation and other content that we make sure isn’t being seen by our kids.

And then there’s the middle ground. Videos that aren’t dangerous to my children but which don’t offer much in the way of broadening their young minds. We allow them to watch such stuff – gaming reviews, food challenges, ‘squishy’ comparisons – in small doses, but I don’t want them watching it all the time.

Sometimes, I’d rather they watch things more akin to what my generation would recognise as ‘normal’ television programmes – viewing that doesn’t involve scrolling to a new video every few seconds and which requires you to have more than a 30-second attention span.

Netflix and other such platforms allow for this, and I’ve been happy for them to watch children’s programme on there. Until now, because Netflix has seems to have given lots of YouTubers series on its platform, and it’s messed up the whole delicate ecosystem of what I allow my children to watch and when.

There was a time, a better time, when YouTube father-and-daughter Jordan and Salish Matter were only viewed on my children’s tablets – on a smaller screen and not too often.

But then, the other day, I heard them booming out of our flatscreen TV in all their 4K glory. Netflix has inexplicably (well, probably not inexplicably, as I’m sure it’s making them a lot of money) given them a series and I’m not okay with it.

They may well be very nice people but I find their videos intolerable. There’s so much screaming. It’s all so ridiculous. And it’s all so fake.

I don’t think it teaches our kids anything, except normalising the idea that someone might ‘break into your house and leave a puppy’, that it’s all right to ‘steal your dad’s car’, and encouraging an unhealthy obsession with pranks, crushes and hiding from your parents in places like theme parks.

So now I’m off to explain to my eight-year-old why it’s unlikely he too will be able to ‘spend 24 hours on a private island’ or ‘build a secret ball pit room’ in our house. Sigh!