SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — As news continues to come out surrounding the investigation of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, some parents say they’re concerned about the videos their kids are watching online. Is there anything parents can do to filter out the videos they don’t want their kids to see?
Even if you specifically put a phrase like “KUTV Charlie Kirk,” and you click on one of those videos, you’re going to be pointed to a slew of other posts about him, both positive and negative. Some parents we’ve spoken with say they don’t want their kids watching Charlie Kirk’s speeches, while others tell us they don’t want their kids seeing videos of people celebrating his death.
Tech insiders say there is very little parents can do to sift out the videos they don’t want their kids watching.
KUTV spoke with Nate, who said even he was dragged into a Charlie Kirk “rabbit hole” by YouTube. He said all he wanted to know was the latest news about what happened. However, YouTube kept feeding him stuff he had no interest in.
“It was sending me a lot of things, to my feed, that the headlines were ‘Breaking News,’ ‘Undiscovered,’ ‘Unforeseen Aspect…’ where I wasn’t even really looking for that or curious about that. I just wanted to follow it, generally, for what were the happenings.”
He admits he didn’t know a lot about Charlie Kirk, so he looked into Kirk’s background after the shooting. That just seemed to make things worse.
“But, it has been interesting how YouTube picked up on that and expanded my footprint into that space,” Nate said.
Internet Service Provider XMission Founder Pete Ashdown said gaming the algorithms of video sites like YouTube is nearly impossible. So, even if you try to see only positive videos about any particular topic, these sites won’t separate the good from the bad.
“It doesn’t really differentiate between the two, because the computer algorithm is just looking for ‘Charlie Kirk.’ That’s all it’s interested in,” Ashdown stated.
So, how can parents make sure their kids don’t see videos that they don’t want them to see? Ashdown says the best thing to do is constant vigilance, which is much easier said than done. Perhaps limiting their screen time to open areas within the house.
“You can see what they’re looking at, instead of them being tucked away in their bedroom. I know that’s hard for a lot of parents. It was hard for me,” Ashdown said.
However, there could be a way to slightly sidestep YouTube’s algorithm. Ashdown added some sites don’t track your history, which includes what you searched for on YouTube.
“The first thing is to use a search engine like Duck Duck Go that advertises the fact that they don’t keep a history of anyone using it. It searches through YouTube videos, as well,” he said.
Ashdown also stated it might help if you searched through YouTube in Google’s Incognito Mode. That way, it won’t always remember the videos you watched.
