My daughter which is only 3.5 years old started watching Youtube reels through my wife phone and I immediately disabled Youtube and installed Youtube for kids as I didn't like what she was watching through the reels.
So yes prevention is better than cure but a lot needs to be done from everyone of us to give the newer generations a safer environment.
There are very few parents like you who care for their children. Most of the parents are so busy in their day to day like that they can't give proper time to their kids, and give smartphones in the hands of the children so they can get entertained. I have seen people who give 5 years old kids smartphones and install applications like TikTok so that the children can enjoy Tiktok. That's the worst thing a parent can do their children but that's a fact which we can't ignore.
You have taken a really great step by disabling YouTube and installed YouTube for kids in that smartphone. I believe that YouTube for kids is still a safer option then YouTube reels. The reel creators sometimes make adult content which isn't good for children and unfortunately if they see such content then their mind will be diverted a lot. There's a saying in our culture that "Childhood memories can never be erased," and whatever a children learns in their childhood days will always remain with them.
Deactivating the applications you said or using children's mode is one way that is accurate and don't allow our children to hold parents' smartphones or buy their own smartphones for their children and all applications use children's mode if available but if not parents still have to monitor what applications are used for the child.
The reason I say don't give our children permission to access our personal smartphones as parents is because of course we sometimes still access online gambling sites or play slots and certain applications. If we often open gambling sites automatically gambling advertisements will continue to appear in any application so we don't give permission. telling our children not to access personal smartphones is a simple way.
So whats the ideal thing to be done? Make your children to be wary on whats the risks on involving with gambling so that on the time that they would really be able to encounter
or see then they do already know on what they should really gonna do and since they have been taught then they would be avoiding it normally.