Brain’s Daughter Banned From Youtube

Computers can we wonderful tools of discovery for kids. We have an iPad at home, and let the kids use it from time to time. We have some children's games on it, but what they really love doing is watching videos on Youtube. What do they watch? What you'd expect 5 and 6 year old girls to watch. They'll come up to me and say, "Dad can you type in Frozen?" Or "can you type in princess or barbie?" Kids stuff. And they always watch the videos in front of either my wife or myself. But last week Carly snuck into her room with the iPad and got herself into some Youtube trouble.

It happened in the morning while I was at work. My wife was getting the kids ready for school, and Carly was in her room with the iPad. Leave it to little sister to rat her out. Cayleigh reported to my wife that Carly was watching a "naughty" video. My wife thought, hey, how naughty could it be. She's watching Disney videos, right? Wrong. Somehow Carly typed a certain word into the search engine and came across a whole new set of videos. Ones NOT aimed at kids. My wife was shocked and upset. She didn't quite catch what Carly was watching and told me that I'd have to check it out when I got home. So when I picked up the iPad, opened Youtube and checked the history, my jaw hit the floor. I'm not going to reveal what the video was called, ask me about it the next time you see me. Needless to say, Carly is banned from Youtube. I might just ban her from the internet until she's 18.

Needless to say, I put in place all the security measures on our internet browsers and search engines. Kids are curious. Carly didn't even understand why what she saw was bad. Another friendly reminder that it doesn't take long for kids to find trouble, especially online.