Youtube / GoAnnimate

Post Reply New Topic

I need some advice please.

My son has an obsession with youtube and in particular youtube videos of GoAnnimate. For those not familiar with this GoAnimate is a basic animation software accessible to kids. Kids make video's using the program and post them on youtube. They tend to follow a format about the kid getting grounded by their parents or getting in trouble at school or whatever. For the most part its fairly inane but harmless kids stuff. However, because the kids can make the characters in the video's say whatever they want by just typing in the words you can imagine that some of the content is highly inappropriate. There is a lot of swearing and I caught him watching a video which repeated said the n word over and over again. The content isn't actually racist it's just silly kids saying the edgiest thing they can think of for shock value.

My son does not actually make the videos he only watches them. He is 9 years old.

My son has no social filter so this language (including the n word) is coming out in the real world. I don't think he knows what the n word even means but he knows it is "naughty" and therefore fun to say. This is becoming a real problem.

So, the obvious solution is to ban youtube right? Or restirict it to kidstube?

This is meant with utter distress at the mere suggestion. He crys and says things like youtube is his best friend. I think he relies on these videos to be a safe space in a complex worlds. Their simple format makes sense to him and he really relies on watching this content. Its a big part of his day and how he de-stresses.

We, therefore, have a situation where he an autistic special interest/obsession that we really should take away from him. If it were my neurotypical kid the solution would be easy. We would ban youtube he would have a strop about it for a few days and then it would all be ok. But with my autistic one its not so simple. With hindsight obviously I wish we had never been so lax on letting him watch youtube content but a few years ago it really helpled with his language delay and actually taught him alot of language. But hindsight is no use to us now.

So, any ideas on strategies to cope with removing an inappropriate special interest? I know it's going to be tough, but we can't have him saying the n-word the f-word and every other expletive under the sun. I think because all these things are said on GoAnnimate videos he just absorbs them and they become a normal part of how he talks. When we tell him off for doing so he says sorry and he won't do it again, but he just can't help it, he has almost no filter.

Any ideas would be most welcome.

That's worrisome. Does he do Scratch programming? My son started Scratch programming when he was 9 years old. Other kids start earlier.

Thanks for sharing about Vyond (GoAnimate). I have seen business people using it, but did not know the name of the platform. Now I also realize some of the videos my son watches on YouTube are actually made from GoAnimate/Vyond.


My take is this. Gaming: needs restriction, or completely eliminated. YouTube: needs time restriction. For devices, there is Screen Time. I never find games helpful. (Ha ha. This is coming from someone who has made a few commercial games. Granted, the games I made were educational, not like today's mind-numbing games.) YouTube on the other hand, it's a necessity.


Send him to Scratch programming and robotics classes. These are very popular nowadays. Scratch is at: https://scratch.mit.edu/. It's free.

But at home, please do this. Hook up a laptop to your big-screen TV. Get a wireless keyboard with track-pad. Get a kid chair (with back support) and small table. That way, your son can do programming in a comfortable environment. I have visited quite a few families with autistic children. The first thing I check is for their TV's connections. I mean, most people have better TVs than mine. Ha ha. I raised my son by making animation video clips. That was how he grew up. Big-screen TV is an essential tool, but most families don't have a laptop hooked up to their TVs.

My son often uses Scratch to make video-like passages. Scratch is better than Vyond, I think, because it has real programming concepts and features built in. It helps children to develop logical thinking.

I know the foul words are annoying. But I wouldn't place my attention there. For autistic children, please focus on their brain development. What I have seen is parents focusing too much on behaviors, while totally neglecting to develop the brains of their children. See, once their brains are developed, everything else will fall into place. When children have reasoning skills, you can talk to them and solve problems from a much higher plane.

It sounds like he has a desire to be creative. However, in the online world he is receiving a context for his creativity that includes input from what might be called "lowest common denominators".

You might search for creative animation software or drawing, painting, writing programs that can be used off-line.

You can tell your son that there are people who are thoughtless and use words and in ways that hurt people. They think they are being funny but are insensitive to others and you do not want him to start to pick up their bad behavior.

With both my kids (one high IQ ASD, and one high IQ NT) I found that telling them what the swear words really mean got them to stop saying them. It's all fun when you don't know the meaning; it feels different in the mouth when you do. You have to know your child because I imagine this tactic could backfire, but it was extremely effective for us.

Another tactic I used, and again success will depend on your unique child, was to tell my kids that I would not limit what they were exposed to IF they were taking responsibility for their own behavior and not mimicking the things they've watched. I made it clear they were not allowed to use certain words or take certain actions, and there would be consequences if they did. One or two slips would be simple censor; a clear pattern would have made me re-think the exposure. I never had to do the later. Not to say I didn't filter at all; I just didn't filter based on bad language or behavior, and I usually followed up exposure to bad language or behavior with discussion on why its bad and what my consequences would be for copying it. Ultimately, I believe that trying to prevent exposure is a losing battle: it is all around our kids, coming from other kids, adult TV shows they may catch out of the corner of an eye, etc. You can't control what they'll get exposed to, but you can guide what they do with it. They are responsible for their own behavior, period, no matter what they see someone else do. That is a good discussion to have.

Finally, guiding your son's video / computer interest into self-teaching programming or video work (as suggested above) is a solid idea.

Affirm his interest in creativity, but raise it to the next level. Tell him that it's better to make that stuff than appear in it, and get him started. But in the meantime, lose YouTube and television.

It's hard recommending that you quash his special interest but there is a time and place for everything and you don't want him to grow up talking like a character off South Park.