Our son (3) likes to watch videos of some of his show characters he likes, and toys for them, etc. He can navigate on an android phone or tablet to choose more videos when the one he is watching is over. Sometimes we let him do this when we are trying to watch another show he is less interested in. Recently though he has ended up on videos that are entirely inappropriate for him just by following other linked videos that pop up when a video is done playing. He somehow got from Cars 2 toys to a compliation of death scenes from the Final Destination movies. Fortunately he had brought the phone to me saying he wanted to watch something else before anything serious started to show, but I would like to find a way to let him view the safe content and restrict the kid-unfriendly stuff. Setting the youtube safety flag to on doesn't really seem to help with this. I did so and was still able to get the same Final Destination video (but the comments were disabled for safety!). Is there a best option for this or am I better off not letting him look at this stuff for safety reasons?
There are no internet filters that work 100% and never will be. Here is a recent list of some decently reviewed ones. No idea how they work on YouTube. http://www.squidoo.com/internet_filter_software_review
The PC is easier to manage because if he's on there I'm on another one right next to him. If he's on the phone or tablet he can be sitting in a chair with the screen toward him and I can't see what's going on.
Googling "internet filters android apps reviews" within past 12 months doesn't turn up much, K9 and Cloudacl popped up.
Most of what I'm finding for android basically locks the device down with custom desktop and content, and i don't think he'd be able to get to the things he likes to watch from there.
A YouTube app where sees white listed kids videos in a distributed way would be an interesting way to resolve the problem.
Related: Foxtube or Tubebox video downloaders. Not sure they will actually work on YouTube (reviews are conflicting). Anyone got any good apps which can do this? Don't have big mobile data plans here in NZ.
Can't you sign in to a specific account on the generic google provided Youtube app and then enable parental controls? *edit* Nope, i just tried it. You think they would think of that.
Yeah that was one of the first things we tried, Talorc. For now we're just keeping the volume up enough so we know what's going on and checking in frequently to what he's watching. He's happy to show us what he's watching so it's not a huge deal at the moment. I just get paranoid. :)
