Is listening to podcast better option than watching YouTube for children?
As Adults spend most of their time scrolling YouTube videos, children generally hang around watching everything sometimes with parents and other times with grandparents. Having their school on their tablets and phones, kids have become extremely comfortable with gadgets. They generally go on YouTube seeking all the answers that they may have, not knowing what content might appear and what they might be exposed to.
As opposed to watching videos, I think podcasts are a better option to gain information on different topics. listening to different experts can help kids have their own imaginations as they gather knowledge on specific topics.
How safe is YouTube for kids?
There are so many random options to watch on YouTube like a bottle being crushed, children eating candies, someone washing cars, someone playing with slime or clay and mind you! these are extremely entertaining for kids to watch for longer period of time. According to Lori Getz, a cyber education consultant“Content on YouTube is user-created, which means anyone can put anything they want on the site. While the company has the right to take something down or flag it as adult content, that doesn’t always happen before a child is exposed to something that can negatively affect them.”
What are your kids watching on YouTube?
According to the reports of Aljazeera,”More than half of these early childhood videos contained up to two ads, while a third contained three or more ads — and 20 percent of those commercials contained content not suitable for children, including violence, sexuality, drugs or alcohol”. Parents are often clueless about what kids watch and they hardly take the responsibility to monitor what their kids are exposed to.
How YouTube might be affecting the kids?
YouTube is a hub for vast source of information for kids and adults but the problem is that it is an open source with no limitations to how much anyone can access. According to research low quality videos can have a negative impact on the language development of Children. There are more chances of meltdown in kids with longer exposure to videos, children are more prone to showing tantrums when the gadgets are taken away.
The best solution to help kids fight the YouTube addiction is to watch the videos along with the kids, in that process the parents can learn a thing or two as well.
How listening to podcasts can be a better option for kids
Last year me and my son discovered some podcasts channels and we loved listening to them. There were authors reading stories from their books, then there were interesting facts on cleanliness, on COVID etc. We found a list of channels that we saved to our playlist like:
- Brains On
- But Why
- Tumble
Expert opinion on listening to podcast
According to Emma Rodero, a communications professor at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona who studies how audio productions retain people’s attention, “Audio is one of the most intimate forms of media because you are constantly building your own images of the story in your mind and you’re creating your own production,”And that of course, is something that you can never get with visual media.”
Wide Range of topics on Podcasts
There are a lot of topics to choose from ranging from science, stories, experiences etc. Parents can choose a topic from the liking of their kids to keep them hooked on, my son takes interest in facts and science topics. He loves episodes from ‘Brain On’ where kids from different parts of the world asks questions like ‘do dogs know they are dogs’, why food is so delicious. Experts answering these questions are not the only fun part, children get a sense of belonging to a community when kids from different part of the world are listening to the topic of their interest.
Podcasts helps in sparking imagination
According to Molly Bloom, co-host and co-creator of science program Brains On!, “ We hear from listeners every day,” Audio is a very intimate medium because it feels almost like a one-to-one interaction on the part of listener. The listener is drawn in because they are painting pictures in their head while listening. That makes it a very active form of consuming information and really engages kids imaginations.”
Podcasts for literacy skills
Podcasts can help kids become better listeners, they get to learn lot of new words at the same time. It can help them communicate better in the long run as they may develop command on the language by hearing the natural patterns of speech, pronunciation, and intonation.According to audiopub.org, listening to audio improves comprehension by 76%, increases reading accuracy by 52%, and can help improve test scores by 21%.
Listen to podcasts together as a family
I strongly feel that whether watching a video on YouTube or listening to a podcast, its important to be alongside our kids. There are topics that can be explored with the kids if they would like to know further, if parents are a part of it then they can discuss it together later as well. Not only that it can reduce the screen time considerably by engaging them even when they are travelling or bored.
Do you listen to podcasts with your kids, do share what you and your kids enjoy together.
References:
https://www.weeditpodcasts.com/10-reasons-why-your-kids-should-be-listening-to-podcasts/
