We've had two parties now where substantial portions of the evening were spent watching YouTube videos on our Wii. Someone would say "Have you seen this one?" and then key up something like Flight of the Conchords. We'd all watch, and laugh heartily, until someone would suggest another video to watch, like the Star Trek version of the NIN Closer video or Chad Vader singing Chocolate Rain. I'm extremely tempted to purchase a USB keyboard for use with the Wii, because keying in search terms using the on-screen keyboard and the Wiimote is a real pain.
Adam Rosi-Kessel observes that kids today are growing up on YouTube. It's an observation that I've shared myself. The amount of YouTube watching that goes on in our house far exceeds television watching. The twins spend a lot of time taking turns on the laptop they share to watch things like talking cats, or fancy soccer tricks. They're far more interested in YouTube videos than they are in watching broadcast television or renting a DVD from Blockbuster.
The kids haven't expressed any interest in publishing anything to YouTube, which has me simultaneously relieved and disappointed. I'm glad that the kids aren't developing a legion of internet followers, but I'm also a little saddened that the kids are more interested in consuming than creating. I do hope that the creative spark will be ignited within them and that they'll take a stab at making something.
The kind of niche programming you can view on YouTube is far greater than even Netflix can provide, and it's all on-demand. Programming is almost entirely uninterrupted by advertising. You can watch what you want to watch, when you want to watch it. I wonder what the long-term effect of YouTube and its ilk will be on mainstream media and the big content producers.
Perhaps I'm overly protective, but my biggest concern with YouTube - and the reason that I don't let the kids randomly surf YouTube watching stuff I haven't previewed - is the volume of questionable material there. Stuff that's either scary, uses unnecessary amounts of profanity, has sexually suggestive (or overtly sexual) content, or is just plain gross. Is this not something you've experienced? Am I reacting to a reality that's no longer present on YouTube? Are there ways to filter search results by default so that I'm not exposing the kids to filth?
My experiences with YouTube to date show that much obviously adult material is filtered from anonymous users. Certainly there's loads of stuff that should be flagged as objectionable but isn't (yet). I agree that there's a lot of trash on YouTube, but thankfully my kids haven't done much (if any) random browsing of videos. They usually search for specific items of interest (talking animals, cartoons they know) or click on links to videos sent to them by their grandmother.
At ten, the kids are exposed to more and more stuff at school than they are at home, so to try to shield them from stuff at home seems to be somehow missing the point. We've done our best to educate them on right and wrong, appropriate and inappropriate, and to our immense relief they don't show much interest (to us, anyway) in watching inappropriate material.
Most of their computer use still occurs with us in the house, and we make it a point to occasionally look over their shoulders to see what they're doing. We don't want to be internet nannies, or strict censors, so we encourage them to make sensible decisions when using the Internet with the understanding that they are being supervised without in-depth monitoring. So far, that kind of honor system has worked well for us.
Watching WiiTube (and other internet browsing) at your house was nearly reason enough to buy a Wii. I know I could hook one of our laptops up to the TV via S-video, but there was just something so beautiful (and insanely geeky) about doing it on the Wii.
Regarding YouTube and children, we've told Emily that she can watch YouTube content only with our permission. Its not that we don't trust her decision making capability, but we don't always trust what others may have sent her. So for now, we'll continue to monitor.