I feel you about short content, I've taken to using uBlock origin with a custom filter to eliminate shorts from the front page. On the other hand when a youtuber makes a video 10-40 minutes long when the brunt of the information could be 1-5 minutes that gets my goat as well. My children do benefit from the amazing assortment of educational and entertaining options, but we watch together and talk about what we see, they're becoming media savvy and complain when sponsor block misses a segment. If we all skipped the ads we would see a new internet emerge.
Let's watch together starts to fall flat when the primary use they have for a device is to chat with family and friends, where it's natural to want a modicum of privacy. I wanna know who they're talking to, not everything they say.
Then, they start watching what their friends share in group chats. I can mostly avoid social media doom scrolling by preventing them having accounts, but not so YouTube.
And it's a tough decision to blanket ban YouTube, since it is used for educational purposes, including by teachers (a teacher wouldn't point a 13 yo pupil to TikTok).
YouTube didn't need to compete with TikTok or Reels; they chose to.
