Where do you go when you know your kids love to watch online video content, but you're worried about what they might be seeing on YouTube? Totlol is a community-moderated video site for 6 month to 6 year olds, and they're hoping you'll think of them when it comes to kid vids. The moderators seem to be doing a good job gathering an age-appropriate collection of YouTube videos, although a few grown-ups at Download Squad might lose some sleep over a certain terrifying singing gummy bear.The question that comes to mind about Totlol isn't whether they're succeeding at filtering YouTube, though. It's whether YouTube really needs to be filtered by an independent service. We figure that if your kids are on the younger side of Totlol's target age range, they're not going to be watching alone, and if they're a little older, they'll be able to figure out how to get to YouTube on their own -- especially with the YouTube logo on all of Totlol's embedded videos.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-27-2008 @ 11:32AM
AskTheAdmin said...
The only reason sites like this pop up is due to parents laziness. As Jay stated parents SHOULD be watching over the young-ins shoulder and not let them fly on their own. BUT that only happens a small percentage of the time and a lot of parents wind up leaving the kid in front of the machine on their own.
For them it is better than nothing... right?
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5-27-2008 @ 3:53PM
allen said...
I has nothing to do with laziness.
If I am at my computer and my 2-year old son comes over and wants to see what dad is doing, it makes a lot more sense for me to jump on a safe site and weed through videos that have already been proven safe than to search through all of youtube for hopefully-safe videos.
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5-27-2008 @ 3:57PM
allen said...
It's whether YouTube really needs to be filtered by an independent service. We figure that if your kids are on the younger side of Totlol's target age range, they're not going to be watching alone, and if they're a little older, they'll be able to figure out how to get to YouTube on their own
I think you're looking at this the wrong way. It's not to "keep kids from finding bad videos". It's more of a way to tell your kids "here's a site that you can surf around on your own" and know that it is safe.
If they are going around you and getting on youtube, if told not to do so, then there's other issues at hand.
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5-27-2008 @ 4:12PM
Jay Hathaway said...
That's a good point, Allen. Looking at it that way, I can see the appeal of a site like this as a way to give kids some independence in choosing what they watch and still have some degree of oversight there. Thanks for the insightful comment.