My family is not the perfect focus group for a children’s streaming service because my six children watch a maximum of two hours per week (except if they are miserably ill). Ages 3 to 13, our children are nearly screen-free and will be for several more years. They have zero access to any screen independently and have permission to get a dumbphone when they are a) driving and b) paying for it.
To us, and for people as different as YouTube comedian J.P. Sears and liberal academic Jonathan Haidt, that seems like the baseline for decent parenting. My husband and I regret all the hours we spent as kids playing the DOS version of “Oregon Trail” and watching cartoons instead of doing literally anything else. We concede their Monday movie night because the kids are aware everyone else watches stuff.
They also listen to audiobooks every once in a while, especially on long car rides, usually on CD, but sometimes on my tablet or a parent’s phone run through the car. And friends host a once-monthly movie musical night I send our kids over to sometimes to get them out of my hair.
They pretty much don’t grumble about this arrangement. When less-trained younger kids whine for more screen time, they get less of it. (See Jordan Peterson’s Rule 5.)
So on several subsequent Mondays, our children have been trialing The Daily Wire’s new kids streaming app, Bentkey, even though there’s no way in Hades we’d ever try its
