Parents at a movie theater let their 6-year-old watch full-volume YouTube videos for the entire runtime of the movie: 'It concerns me how many children cannot sit without mindless garbage'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Sep 11, 2024 8:00 PM EDT

It seems like nobody's attention spans are getting any longer. When I was a kid, video games were the main culprit in the 'technology is ruining our children' culture war, but I think YouTube might've been the biggest culprit. Like all other social media, YouTube is controlled by an algorithm that only shows you what it thinks you'd be interested in. That sounds fine if you're making money from people clicking on YouTube videos, but what's good for the goose isn't always what's good for the gander. Some discipline is acquired in not having unlimited options. If you were a kid in the 90s, there were probably only 2 or 3 TV channels specifically catered to your age group, and that's if you had cable. The same was true for movie theaters; they never play more than 3-4 kids' movies on any given day. If those are your only options, you either engage with it or go and do something else. If there were 300 channels for kids, they would undoubtedly be glued to the TV all day without recourse.

If your kid can't go for hours without watching whatever they want to watch, that's not a good sign. That's why it's concerning that some parents let their kids play on their phones at full volume while in a movie theater.