6yo addicted to YouTube shorts, losing it

2w ago·1 min read

I made a huge mistake letting my daughter have access to YouTube shorts and now I can't get her off it. She literally cries when I take the tablet away. I've tried everything - limiting screen time with the parental controls, replacing it with other activities, even deleting the app. But then she finds it on my phone or her moms phone. This is the most frustrated I've been as a parent and I feel like I'm failing. Any parents dealt with this successfully? How did you break the cycle?

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Comments(3)

BBrandonNew Dad1w ago

Man I feel this in my soul. My daughter is the same age and went through a similar phase. What helped us was replacing it with something else she could be excited about - in our case it was building stuff with LEGOs. Gotta give them something to redirect that dopamine hit to.

PPedroRegular1w ago

Yeah the shorts format is brutal. My oldest got hooked on TikTok and I had to just accept that I needed to be way more strict upfront instead of trying to manage it after the fact. Wish I'd caught it earlier like you're trying to do now.

DDerekRegular1w ago

YouTube Shorts are absolutely designed to be addictive - the algorithm is relentless. I've been dealing with this too and honestly the only thing that worked was removing the app entirely and using parental controls to block the website on her devices. Cold turkey sucks but it beats the constant battles.