What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O.

My brain, too, but yeah. I have three kids of my own, so as a parent, I think about their development every single day. I encourage my kids to run around and touch grass. I encourage them to read as much as they possibly can. On YouTube, there’s content, as we’ve described, that young people find entertaining and they learn new things on a regular basis.

This isn’t a gotcha. I’m genuinely curious: Do you think it matters that they are learning things through video and that it’s changing the way they absorb information? I think that video, just like reading, is an important way for people to learn. And when you say the term “video,” it’s like learning visually. Back in the day, we learned in the classroom visually from our teachers. I do see a lot of that learning happening on YouTube. And actually, teachers tell me that all the time, too.

My daughter is dyslexic, and YouTube is a huge part of her life. She learns visually, and it’s been a godsend for her for all sorts of different reasons. So this isn’t to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing. I think about it more in the analogy of a library. It’s a visual library, but it’s a library that has lots and lots and lots of books in it. And the way that information or knowledge is communicated or new ways of thinking is communicated is audiovisual, and I do think that is an effective way for people to learn. Do I think it’s the only way? Of course not.

I want to ask you about a lawsuit that’s happening where you’re currently, along with Meta, being sued by a young woman who says YouTube is addictive and harmful. This is considered a landmark case here in California. Do you feel a responsibility to remedy the harm if your site is addictive to people? [After Mohan and I spoke, the jury in this case found YouTube and Meta negligent. A YouTube spokesman told us that YouTube disagreed with the verdict and planned to appeal.] I shouldn’t comment on that specific trial, as you can understand. What I will say is that YouTube is this platform where people go for many different reasons — to blow off steam, to listen to their favorite artists, to connect with community and to learn. So we should be thinking about protecting young people in the digital world as opposed to protecting them from the digital world. The best analogy I can think about is teaching my daughter to ride a bike. It starts with training wheels, and you take off the training wheels, and then eventually she can ride her bike and be on her own.

It’s impossible to put guardrails on kids with devices. It’s so hard. That’s what I was trying to say, that principle of making sure that we’re protecting young people in the digital world as opposed to shutting them off from it. Because I also think it’s wrong, frankly, to eliminate that knowledge, that library of content. So then how do you approach it? The way I think you approach it is to make it so that parental controls, as you described, are truly practical and easy to use, and can actually be enforceable. That’s what we can do.