Should I (24) be worried about my niece (10F) and her internet habits?

I was watching my niece today while her parents were out. We're pretty close, and we've bonded a lot over her interests in video games and youtube since I'm the only one in the family that's familiar enough with that stuff to actually be able to talk about it with her. She was talking about her own youtube channel, which I knew of but hadn't looked into because I forgot the name of it, so I got the name from her and decided to check it out.

I learned that she's very into the gacha life, littlest pet shop, and roblox parts of youtube, which are probably mostly innocent but I am aware that there's some pretty inappropriate content that comes from those communities, especially gacha. (For context, people use gacha characters to act out stories for videos, and if you search for them on youtube you'll see that a lot of them are sexual, violent, or have other disturbing themes very much not for kids.) It doesn't look like she's made anything that concerning, but I do worry about what sorts of videos she's being exposed to.

I also noticed that in one video she mentioned breaking up with her boyfriend, and maybe it's just me, but 10 seems awfully young to be dating? Or maybe that's normal these days and I wasn't aware? I don't have kids so I'm pretty clueless about this stuff.

I should note that her mom did give her permission to make a youtube channel, so it's possible that she's monitoring things. She's usually pretty attentive about the games her kid plays, the youtubers she watches, etc.

I don't know, am I worrying too much? Should I bring up my concerns with her mom or just let her be? I guess I've been on the internet for so long and have seen so many horrible things that I can't help but feel protective of this child.

TLDR- I'm worried about my 10 year old niece finding the weird inappropriate parts of youtube and want to know if I'm overreacting



Submitted April 09, 2020 at 12:31AM

I was watching my niece today while her parents were out. We're pretty close, and we've bonded a lot over her interests in video games and youtube since I'm the only one in the family that's familiar enough with that stuff to actually be able to talk about it with her. She was talking about her own youtube channel, which I knew of but hadn't looked into because I forgot the name of it, so I got the name from her and decided to check it out.I learned that she's very into the gacha life, littlest pet shop, and roblox parts of youtube, which are probably mostly innocent but I am aware that there's some pretty inappropriate content that comes from those communities, especially gacha. (For context, people use gacha characters to act out stories for videos, and if you search for them on youtube you'll see that a lot of them are sexual, violent, or have other disturbing themes very much not for kids.) It doesn't look like she's made anything that concerning, but I do worry about what sorts of videos she's being exposed to.I also noticed that in one video she mentioned breaking up with her boyfriend, and maybe it's just me, but 10 seems awfully young to be dating? Or maybe that's normal these days and I wasn't aware? I don't have kids so I'm pretty clueless about this stuff.I should note that her mom did give her permission to make a youtube channel, so it's possible that she's monitoring things. She's usually pretty attentive about the games her kid plays, the youtubers she watches, etc.I don't know, am I worrying too much? Should I bring up my concerns with her mom or just let her be? I guess I've been on the internet for so long and have seen so many horrible things that I can't help but feel protective of this child.TLDR- I'm worried about my 10 year old niece finding the weird inappropriate parts of youtube and want to know if I'm overreacting
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