It's no secret that YouTube's age demographics skew young, but young still means 18-34, and much of the content on the site would be inappropriate for children under the age of 13 -- the COPPA cut off age that YouTube adheres to as the minimum allowed for anyone to sign up on the site. Totlol is a new video site that launched in beta this week aimed at children aged 6 months to 6 years. The site is community moderated to ensure that video content is always appropriate for small children.
When I first read "community moderated video site for kids under 6 years of age," my immediate reaction was, "bad idea." Community moderation, after all, isn't foolproof and before the community has time to react, often bad stuff slips through. But Totlol is set up in a way that parents are able to screen and weed out bad videos before they reach the eyes of their children.
The site is basically an additional layer of screening for YouTube. Parents scan the YouTube movie database via a special scouting tool on Totlol. When they find a video that they think is good for children under 6 years old, they tag it, add a description, and submit it to the database. The video then enters a screening queue were other parents are asked to answer whether it is appropriate for the site and for which age group the video would be most enjoyed. The screening answers are analyzed algorithmically and only videos that parents collectively deem age appropriate are added to the sites library.
Videos are then played via the YouTube API with a Totlol skin on the player. So far, Totlol users have added just over 100 videos to the site, which only allows people over the age of 18 to join -- assuring that it shields itself from child protection laws by putting parents in complete control.
Totlol is a cool idea, and the only children's video site that we know of that relies on parental screening to decide which videos to add to its database (though please let us know if there are any others in the comments). With the number of computer savvy 6-year-olds on the rise, this site will probably be a hit among both parents and toddler alike.
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Pretty neat! It could use a button to make the videos full screen.
Posted by: Bob Lee | May 13, 2008 12:15 PM
Great idea!
I shoulda thunkit..
Posted by: Jon | May 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Am I the only one who questions the wisdom of any video being targeted at the under 2 demographic? Recent research concluded children under 2 years of age shouldn't have any screentime at all (I'll dig up a link or two if anyone's interested) as TV/video can actually have a negative impact on things like vocabulary development.
I'm amazed at the amount of screentime I see other people allowing their little ones. I struggle to see the value in encouraging more of it at that age.
Posted by: Shane | May 13, 2008 8:15 PM
When my daughter was two, and a bit younger, I used to show her video clips on YouTube, mostly of the laughing babies variety. She loved it. Most were just half-a-minute to a couple of minutes long and she would laugh like crazy while the baby onscreen was laughing then ask me to play it again. As she was an only child cared for at home, it was sometimes the only other kids she saw for days at a time.
So I think saying toddlers "shouldn't have any screentime at all" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Posted by: Joy | May 14, 2008 6:28 AM
The prevailing wisdom is that video for children under two is bad because of its passive nature. In other words, using any type of video as a purely passive activity (i.e. a babysitter) is bad for a child's development. So, as long as you engage your child while watching video (i.e. "Can you dance like Elmo?") there will be minimal damage done to their development.
I wrote "minimal damage" since we (the scientific community) know so little about child development. Heck, I could be slowing my daughter's development down by tickling her; we just don't know. Consequently we keep videos (and tickling) to a small amount. :)
Posted by: Sam | May 14, 2008 12:25 PM
@Sam
We can't get our son to engage when the TV is on. He either stares at it in a trancelike state, or he gets agitated until we turn it off.
@Joy
I don't have much of an issue with "2 or a big younger" as every child develops at a different rate. I do have an issue with video being targeted at children from 6 months of age. Toddlers can benefit from screentime but some of the target demographic here is most definitely pre-toddler.
Anyway, I'll climb down off my soapbox here. I firmly believe that everyone has the right to parent how they see fit and I don't want this to become a "video is good/bad" thing (possibly I should have kept my concerns to myself in the first place :p )
Posted by: Shane | May 14, 2008 3:54 PM