If you're not influencing your teenager's YouTube algorithm, are you even parenting?

I have mixed feelings already on allowing my teen to have access to YouTube. But if there is ANYTHING that parenting has taught me (and my own dad has taught me about myself,) it's that limiting access to things is a great way to encourage your teen to sneak around getting them anyway. Knowing that, is it a better choice to allow them to have guardrail access and log into their account checking their history and adjusting accordingly? That's the choice I've made, right wrong or indifferent.

If you already know what I'm afraid of, skip this paragraph and read on. But if you don't, get on YouTube or Tiktok and create a new account, setting the age to 13 and the gender to male. And I want you to notice what it shows you, before that algorithm even has a chance to know you. Buckle up, because it will horrify you how quickly you are shown the yellow brick road to the alt right pipeline. If you haven't run across a young white male Christian Nationalist within 5 minutes, I'll eat my sock. So if you don't want your child parroting Nick Fuentes "women in the kitchen" talking points the next time you tell him to unload the dishwasher, what should you do? Keep them completely off the internet? That's my kneejerk reaction. But I know my kid is getting show videos by his friends, watching YouTube on any smart TV he has access to, and running across these talking points who knows where else, and I want to teach him media literacy. How do I do that without allowing him some media consumption? And trust me, I have the FEAR. I'm as terrified about allowing him to open YouTube as I am to let him get behind the wheel of a car. But I want to raise a person who can servive without me looking over his shoulder constantly, so I have to ease him in.

But HOW? YouTube is actually worse than tiktok about guardrails. On a teen account (not YouTube kids), there are no guardrails other than that you can see their history and block explicit content just like you would for yours. You can't block hashtags, it's very difficult to hard block creators, you can only mark that you are uninterested in this creator. But then they show you Joe Rogan instead of Nick Fuentes. Their algorithm is almost determined to push my teen boy down a path I don't want him to walk.

So I log into YouTube as him and slog through videogame content to adjust his algorithm and mark INCEL propaganda with a thumbs down. After spending hours upon hours doing this, here is what I've learned:

1. You may have heard that Gen Alpha boys are leaning more conservative and the girls are leaning more progressive. I am now 100% convinced that this is due almost exclusively to social media, though the polarization of politics is absolutely contributing to that.

2. You can thumbs down the bullshit all you want, but YouTube doesn't seem to learn not to show you similar content. I may thumbs down a Nick Fuentes video and tell YouTube not to show me anything from that creator. It will then show me other creators who have TALKED about Nick Fuentes's videos in a positive way. WTAF?!

3. And for my final point and the reason I'm writing this post - There do not seem to be any teen boys or young men creating progressive content for my teen to watch. And I think I know why.

For all of Republicans' talk about "liberals are groomers," THEY are the ones who are statistically grooming children, not just for Epsteiny things, but for the red pill pipeline. There are tons of young 20 and 30 year old men posing as teens with clean shaven faces and shaggy haircuts telling boys about how the Bible says that women should submit to them. And what is more attractive to a teen boy, a child whose amygdala has outgrown their decision making capabilities and they have the body of an adult with the authority of a child, than having more power over other people? Especially people like their mother, who is more than likely the default parent?

I don't believe there are many self respecting progressive men who think that influencing teens on the internet is inherently good. And there are very few progressive parents that want their kids creating content for the public. Just the idea of it is ick, isn't it? But therein lies a problem.

In this day and age of teens on the internet, there are very few good influences that look like them, even the white boys. (Please don't mistake me as saying, "oh the underrepresented white boy, how I lament for thee!" I'm saying there are no good ones I want my child watching.)

Do I think there are easy answers to this problem? Of course not. But there are a few things that I think we, as a collective, can do to help.

1. We should all be emailing YouTube demanding we get some of the same algorithm control we have with tiktok. Blocking creators, blocking hashtags, blocking key words.

2. We should popularize marginalized creators, whose voices NEED to be heard by more people. Including our teens. This means when you watch a video by a creator you like, watch it ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

3. Consume some content together. I will occasionally ask my teen, hey! Want to watch videos together? Compare and contrast. Laugh together at your goofy parent algorithm, and watch with genuine interest the things your kid is interested in. Talk together. Laugh at things that make you want to scream. WAIT WHAT? I said what I said. If you see a man talking about how God said women should dress modestly, laugh and say "Jesus told men to scoop their eyes out. No, seriously!" Point our when you see AI. Engage with media critically, and pick it apart, but have fun with it. When your child starts noticing things, compliment them on their media literacy. "Wow, good catch!"

Remember that making things and people ridiculous takes away far more of their power than making them scary. Don't believe me? Look at how Germans currently portray Hitler. They make him ridiculous, foolish. Not terrifying. Why? Because fear can be powerful. But nobody made ridiculous holds much influence or power. Empower your kids with the media literacy they will so desperately need in this end stage capilist AI era.

I've compiled a short list of reads below that I plan to study and share with my teen.

How do you handle YouTube with your kids?

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