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Plex, Jellyfin, and similar solutions where you rip content for your own media collection and serve in a constrained manner can solve for this. App gets installed on kid's device, and you use the cli or use the web interface to push it into the storage system it's streamed from.

(i do this, it is very straightforward and keeps my kids off of Youtube)

I've been thinking of doing something like that with a Synology

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36378689 might be useful

Though the UI/iPad app of Plex is buggy and difficult too use. I haven't tried Jellyfin enough yet though.

Yes, seems like a better strategy. Even something like newpipe on an old android phone curating/downloading locally and playing through vlc. Simple and works great.

I actually noticed in the brave settings on android recently it can block all youtube comments/recommended/etc so that may be even simpler

I agree that this is the way to go. I'd also recommend the PBS kids video app as something you can let them navigate and explore without worry.