I had a lot of frustrations with the Youtube Kids app until I realized that if, when setting it up, rather than choosing the appropriate age range, you picked the "custom" (or whatever it was, it was annoyingly hidden all the way to the right, so you can't even see it at first), you are able to white list channels and videos, rather than just blacklist. Why this feature is hidden behind a different age selector rather than being part of any of the age settings I do not understand, but it's a lot better, and it could prevent the issue you describe, although admittedly it does require more work on the parents part to find and approve appropriate content. This is easier for younger kids at least.
Now only if they added parental controls for the standard Youtube app to block Shorts completely.
My kids aren't allowed to use TikTok and now Google decided to shove it in Youtube - and make it impossible to block.
I wrote a blog post about that if it helps others. It is a real game changer: https://abparenting.substack.com/p/effective-youtube-kids
wait is this real? this is a thing ive been wanting, some channels that are fine are not in ytkids and some of the stuff in ytkids is just junk if we could curate a whitelist that would be perfect
I think you can only whitelist channels that are approved kids channels, not from the full youtube library, but it does allow you to avoid the ocean of crap and pick just the good stuff.
You can actually share any channel!
It is a very hidden feature though. You have to link your kids account to yours, and then in the Youtube mobile app (not on the web), you can click the three dots button and then share > "with kids"
So that way you can build up a whitelist of channels that they can see in the YT kids account.
Yes, it is real, but a bit tricky to setup with caveats: https://abparenting.substack.com/p/effective-youtube-kids