Youtube

Ridiculous hypothetical: Imagine a world just like ours, except the drinking fountains in public parks contain non-alcoholic beer instead of water.

I don't know why - let's say that in 1893 Budweiser paid to install such drinking fountains in a few parks in St. Louis, and then other brewers followed suit, and Parks & Rec departments funneled the money saved into other things, and now it's just normal and accepted everywhere. Every park in America has, totally free of charge, guaranteed ice-cold, NA beer. What would happen?

Probably, some parents would tell their kids to avoid the beer fountains and bring a thermos of water. Others would let their kids drink the NA beer but with limits, and still other parents would say it's great and let their kids have as much NA beer as they like. Probably some of those parents would call some of the other parents uptight, or irresponsible.

But almost everyone would let their kids drink from them at least occasionally, because it's right there and it's free.

This is a post about Youtube videos in schools.

My kids didn't know what Youtube was until their teacher showed them a video in second grade. I'm annoyed that they didn't ask first, and I hate that the schools are normalizing the idea that youtube is a source of educational information. I hate that they learned about streamers and Italian brainrot at school. But I get it. Because youtube is right there and it's free.

I can imagine a hypothetical society in which the educational videos kids see in school are paid for with taxes because we as a society think it's too important to be left up to a giant corporation who's pushing a dubious product. I'm not sure whether that or the one I described earlier is less realistic.