When it comes to content to watch, kids have a lot of options these days. There are still the classics, like Sesame Street, but also a new kids media titan: YouTube.

So how can a parent make sense of all this different content? And what’s the best way for young kids to engage with it?

These are the questions we posed to Dr. Jenny Radesky in this week’s episode of Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

Radesky is a developmental and behavioral pediatrician at University of Michigan Medical School. She’s also a media researcher and a director of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health.

She says children’s media is very different from how it used to be. “I grew up in the 1980s when we would go watch Saturday morning cartoons all huddled together while my parents slept,” she told Vox. “There was a time and a place when technology could be watched, and that’s what’s really different about today. Now we have endless content on-demand and we have marketplaces and platforms where these pieces of content are competing for kids’ attention.”

Radesky has tools for parents when it comes to best practices for kids and their media consumption. Below is an excerpt of our conversation with Radesky, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on

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