Many districts around the country are banning YouTube on student devices after discovering that it’s a primary source of distraction. The San Luis Obispo district found that YouTube accounted for 85% of web traffic on student devices. All the statistics show that YouTube can be a dangerous and distracting place to be - especially for growing brains. There may be a time and a place for YouTube - but school is not it!

Here are the stats:
-In a NYT poll of teachers, 61% said their students were using personal learning devices to watch videos. And 26% said their students were watching YouTube during class. (source)
-At least 26% of urban teens say they are on YouTube almost "constantly." (source)
-Only about 4% of videos on YouTube have "high educational value." (source)
- There's a 45% probability of a child reaching inappropriate content within 10 clicks of a first, child-oriented YouTube video. (source)
-14% of video content consumed by children 8 and up on YouTube had persistent themes of violence. (source)
-A recent report shows that YouTube proactively recommends eating disorders and self-harm content to teenager accounts. (source)

LAUSD's Chief Information Officer said himself that "removing YouTube" was the easy part (source), but hasn't done it yet. However, each school has the option to do it themselves.

LACES students are on YouTube during all hours of the day. It is distracting from their own work, distracting their peers within the classroom or common spaces and is creating screen addictions that are preventing them from being the best students they can be. In addition, parents have no access to parental controls on Chromebooks or the websites they visit. The school district has blocked social media from these computers, but YouTube shorts are the same TikTok and Instagram videos, just on a different platform.

While teachers will still be allowed to use Google Classroom to show and embed YouTube videos for instructional materials, we are requesting that LACES continues to lead the way with high academic standards and block YouTube on all student devices to allow for students' optimum safety, mental health and success.