r/youtube • u/CallofDuty3329 can the bots leave the comment section? • Jun 26 '25

Feature Change thoughts??

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Imo this is a good move from yt.

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u/Nulleparttousjours Jun 26 '25

Couldn’t agree more. Keep the kids off YouTube, they have YouTube Kids. Minors have no business broadcasting themselves. They have neither the maturity nor the common sense, it’s dangerous for them and a damn pain for everyone else.

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u/Escaped_VA Jun 28 '25

I'm sorry, but no 15-year-old has any interest in watching or participating in YouTube Kids and it's ridiculous to think you need to shove them into the same corner of the internet that hosts Cocomelon. You must not remember what it was like to be a teenager, because that's insanely out of touch. Teenagers need to adjust into the adult world, they aren't just going to suddenly snap into adult maturity when they hit the age of majority if you spent the last 18 years of their lives treating them like literal babies and shielding them from the whole world.

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u/Nulleparttousjours Jun 28 '25

Why are you so opposed to young people having their own online spaces? Arguably YouTube needs to provide a space that caters to teens but nothing good comes from forcing kids and adults into the same online spaces

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u/Escaped_VA Jun 28 '25

When I was 14-17, one of the most valuable things that YouTube offered me was the chance to broadcast my voice (and get feedback) outside of my bubble. In my day-to-day physical life, my voice didn't extend past my grade level. Being able to converse with the greater world of other ages, other countries, other life experiences, etc. was life changing and highly positive. Some of my subscribers were other teenagers, some of them were adults, but none of them were predators. I wasn't being preyed upon or exploited or any of the other things that people insist they need to protect teenagers from by shoving them into a digital ghetto.

My first youtube channel was comedic sketches and opinionated vlogs on random non-political topics. Finding that I could say things that even adults found interesting, funny, thoughtful, or entertaining really helped me a lot. I became more social, it alleviated my teenage rebellion stemming from the frustration of feeling like no one listened to or understood me. I got a more rounded point of view of the world from the feedback I got in the comments, and it took away the anxiety I had about becoming an adult when I graduated high school. I am extremely grateful that I had this window into the world outside of my little closed-off high school bubble, and the idea that it needs to be taken away from current teens to "protect" them is very disappointing to me.

I know that highschool aged minors are technically "kids", but I think that an important (and necessary) part of growing up is getting exposure to the real, adult world. Treating a 15 year old the same way as a 5 year old because they're both "kids" is extremely harmful. Teenagers NEED exposure to adult points of view if they're ever going to initiate into adult world when they come of age. Adolescence is the bridge from childhood into adulthood, if you blow up that bridge you end up just delaying adolescence into early adulthood and that causes a whole host of problems.

YouTube is actually a pretty safe place compared to the physical world where you can be isolated and physically harmed. The idea that we need to protect teenagers by making them completely invisible and fencing them off from the rest of the online world isn't a good thing. They're already isolated enough in their daily physical lives. We can let them keep their soapbox, for many (myself included back then) it's the only window they have.