Dad starts own YouTube channel... so he can talk to his phones-crazy kids
A FATHER has set up a YouTube channel to talk to his five children – because they are always too busy staring at their mobile phones to speak to him.
Joe Smith, 43, says he is fed up with his daughters, aged 10 and 11, and his sons – 13, 14 and 22 – “watching mindless c**p”.
So he has launched Joe Daddyutube, announcing in his first video: “Hi, my name is Joe Daddy, welcome to my YouTube channel.
“I have set this up because I am sick to death of seeing my kids constantly with their heads down on their phones.
“So, if this is the only way I’m going to be able to communicate with them, that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Mindless
Joe decided enough was enough at the start of Easter half-term.
Joe, of Hull, said: “I was just a bit upset this morning. I got up, I came down and I want to talk to my two beautiful daughters and their heads are on the phone watching YouTube.
“I just thought to myself, ‘If you can’t beat them, join them’.
“I had a really good suggestion from an old school friend.
“She said, ‘Why don’t you start a YouTube channel’. So I am.”
Now he hopes other parents will do the same.
In his first video, he says: “This goes out to all the parents who are sick to death of seeing your kids with their head buried in their phone watching YouTube.
“I suggest you have a go at doing it.” Urging his children to sign up, he adds: “I’m just going to do random videos. I hope you enjoy them. This is just going to be the first of many.
“I want my kids to be watching me, not watching mindless c**p.”
At one point, he asks his daughters what they are looking at. They chorus: “YouTube”. He replies: “Surprise, surprise.”
Joe posted his second video soon afterwards when daughter Georgia pointed out that he had filmed the first one the “wrong” way round, portrait-style.
“I’ve re-done this video in landscape mode but this is what I have to put up with,” he said. “This is it, this is my life.”
Food sales manager Joe reckons the videos will be a nice way for his children to see what he is up to as he travels in Britain and overseas.
He said: “It will be so much better than sending a WhatsApp video. It will let them know where I am and what I’m doing.”
Joe said he did it for a laugh and was not afraid to tell his children to get off YouTube.
“They are not on it all day. It’s the holidays, I don’t mind. They work hard at school,” he said.
But he is concerned about what his children look at online.
“None of them have Facebook apart from my eldest son,” he said. “I allow them to have Instagram but we monitor that.”