YouTube for Kids – Tot LOL
I’m not sure how I feel about a safe space for videos for kids.
I mean, yeah, sure, I’d love to know my three-year-old’s clicking on a REAL clip of Thomas the Tank Engine, not Thomas Gets Tanked. But what’s YouTube without poorly spelled titles and bad impersonations?
Don’t worry, TotLOL has those too. But the site that bills itself as “a community-moderated video website designed specifically for children” has a lot of things going for it. Like no Thomas Gets Tanked, natch.
Oh, yeah, and all videos were submitted, screened and rated by parents – straight from YouTube. Using a TotLOL tool, parents browse YouTube and pick videos they think are appropriate for kids. They submit them for inclusion on TotLOL, and the TotLOL community votes on whether or not they’re truly appropriate kid fare.
Plus, since the site
is powered by YouTube, once you sign up for a free account you can rate videos and make collections of your favorites. The site includes parental controls plus the ability to watch private videos linked from another user’s YouTube account, so you can save shots of the kiddies dancing naked for Grandma instead of spinning out a viral video.
Even without an account, you can search and watch, including the ripped from TV content your kids love (the much more appropriate Sir Topham Hatt Sing Along comes to mind).
The creator is a father of two toddlers (three and one and a half) who are both “avid fans of online videos.” Do your kids watch online videos? If not, does this change your mind?
Image: TotLOL
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My girls love YouTube :-p But, I love this idea! They haven’t clicked on anything truly inappropriate yet, but this sounds like a really good idea… I hope it catches on!