I have a younger sibling who watches YouTube all day, and I have just installed (among other things, including Fedora KDE!) FreeTube on their laptop, and it has a convenient profiles feature to separate, for instance, educational and not so educational content.
What are some good sciencey channels that are easy to follow and are run be nice people (rather than bots or similar)? I’ve got SciShow, Clint’s Reptiles, and a few others already, but what are some good ones that you all know? They are currently interested in animals, particularly sea creatures and reptiles, but other topics are fun too (history, chemistry, CS, whatever are all good!)
Casual Geographic is a very funny no-nonsense animal channel. If there’s a cute animal he’ll remind you that it’s still a wild animal that can be dangerous. If there’s a dangerous animal he’ll tell you how cute it is.
Not quite sure if it is suited for preteens. He talks fast and has some very creative euphemisms for killing and mating. But I’d say the humour makes up for it.
I wrote a bunch below, but I think most of them are probably aimed at a bit older audience, but I figured I would still post it as I really enjoy the channels and perhaps someone will like them :) (I think minute earth and Steve Mould could be suited for someone a bit younger)
- For biology I really enjoy ‘Sage the Bad Naturalist’
- for engineering ‘Stuff made Here’
- physics/electricity ‘alpha phoenix’ (I think his videos are quite technical but they are really good)
- Generally interesting/physics ‘Steve Mould’
- Minute physics, Minute Earth and Minute food
- For math ‘3blue1brown’
Just checked, and the kings of science communication (mythbusters) have a youtube channel with old episodes chopped up as individual myths: https://youtube.com/@mythbusterstvshow
https://m.youtube.com/@pbsspacetime
Great show, breaks down complex science without making it dumb, and seems to be pretty on top of the latest news.
doesnt look like its for pre-teens.
What is your criteria for preteens?
i do have some for sea reptiles and dino fossils, but it seems mroe fore uni students than pre-teens.
No specific recommendations, but make sure it’s something they enjoy. Bad content will turn them off from science as a whole. If they lose interest in a creator, don’t press them. Just find something else and move on.
