On School-Issued Device, He Viewed 13K YouTube Videos

In many US classrooms, the day now runs on YouTube. That's the picture the Wall Street Journal draws, starting with a Kansas mom who found out her seventh grader had binged more than 13,000 videos on his school-issued device in just three months—many of them gun-heavy or sexually suggestive, and all delivered via the platform's recommendation engine. "It made me cry," Amy Warren says of her discovery. Interviews with dozens of families, educators, administrators, and clinicians suggest that student is far from alone: Districts that leaned on Chromebooks and iPads to modernize and personalize learning instead found students disappearing into YouTube "Shorts," gaming clips, and makeup tutorials, often during class time.

The Journal details how YouTube became embedded in the K-12 system, including Google's push to seed Chromebooks in schools, internal documents showing worries about "broken" classroom experiences and addictive content, and tools that districts say are too easy for kids to dodge. Researchers and some teachers link rising screen use with sliding test scores and attention problems, while parents-turned-activists are forcing districts to block or sharply limit YouTube, even as many teachers say they still need it for some of their lessons. As for the kids themselves, some seem open to a curtailing of this form of online education. "Everything is a simulated experience," the boy who watched 13,000 videos tells the Journal. "I would rather use paper and pencil. It's easier to focus." More here.