So... My 7-year old comes in and says, “Dad… Moms says I’ve got 10 minutes to go before bed, and I’m supposed to bug you so that I’m not bugging her.”
“That’s cool. Whaddya wanna do for 10 minutes?”
He thinks for a bit, then says, “I want to watch some funny turtle videos on YouTube.”
My wife and I get lots of links to various Internet videos, and find them ourselves during the course of being normal Web-using folk. Many of them are fine to share with the boy… many of them are not. We watch with him, so we can tell what’s going to be appropriate. But sometimes it’s hard to tell, on the fly, what’s what…
I asked him, “Were you looking at turtle videos before?”
He said, “No. But Mom’s showed me other funny animal videos on YouTube, and I’m thinking about how I may want a turtle, and figured there’d be funny turtle videos on YouTube.”
He was, of course, right. We found “Turtle vs. Cat” very quickly, and then a couple more. Neat stuff. Took about 12 of the 10 minutes Mom had given him, and off he went to bed.
While searching for funny turtle videos, though… I found some that I would not ever share with a kid. Because “funny” means lots of things to lots of people. Sometimes it means stuff that a kid wouldn’t get, like stand-up comedy. Sometimes it means really, really rude stuff that you don’t want your kid to see, let alone understand at the age of seven. For some people, apparently, teenagers skateboarding off the roof of their garage and breaking a bone qualifies as “funny.”
I started looking for more funny videos that were appropriate for kids. And it was harder than I thought. In many cases, you have to wade through a lot of junk in order to find a good one. In some cases, videos tagged with “funny” and “kid” are videos about kids doing funny things. Which is fine… but not what I want to watch with my kid all the time.
So I figured, if I was going to put effort into finding videos I’m OK sharing with my 7-year-old son… why not share them with other people and their kids? Thus, the idea for KidVidId was born.
Why the name? Well, hopefully, the “Kid” and “Vid” parts are obvious. I added “Id” to stand for both “ID,” as in “identification” — a way to ID good vids for kids — and because “id” also means the part of you that likes stupid videos. As opposed to the “ego” which likes videos of your own kids, and “superego” which likes doing things not involving Internet video.
All the videos at the site are pre-screened to be OK for kids. And by “kids” I mean my kid and his friends. I’m plunking down an “average” here, and if you still find some of the stuff inappropriate for your kid, I’m sorry. It will all be PG or G stuff, won’t encourage violence towards others, may be educational or funny, or just interesting. Use the category tags.
If any TinkerX readers know of blogs/sites that cater to kids, parents, funny videos, cats, inventions, juggling, etc., and think they should have a link or post about KidVidId, please pass along the URL, as I can use all the link-love I can get.
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