Has anyone else found YouTube Restricted Mode kind of... inconsistent?

So I've been testing out YouTube's Restricted Mode for the past few weeks after my kid stumbled on some really inappropriate stuff, and I wanted to share what I'm seeing. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Here's the thing - it's free and takes like 30 seconds to turn on, which is great. And it does block a lot of the obviously mature content. But the more I use it, the more I'm noticing some weird patterns.

First off, it definitely misses things. I'd say maybe 20-30% of stuff that should be blocked just... isn't? Like, videos with clearly inappropriate thumbnails or language just slip right through. The algorithmic filtering seems pretty hit or miss. But then on the flip side, it'll randomly block totally innocent educational videos. My kid was trying to watch something about space and it got blocked for no reason I could figure out.

The other thing that's been bugging me is that my kid figured out pretty quickly they could just open an incognito window and boom - Restricted Mode is gone. And I have to enable it separately on every single browser and device, which gets old fast when you've got tablets, phones, computers, etc.

I did some digging and apparently YouTube even says in their own documentation that Restricted Mode is really designed for schools and libraries, not home parental controls. That kind of explained a lot.

Don't get me wrong - I'm still using it as a baseline because it's better than nothing. But I definitely can't rely on it alone. I'm having to layer in other controls and basically stay pretty hands-on with monitoring.

Is anyone else seeing this inconsistency? Like, what's your experience been with what it blocks versus what it lets through? Am I just unlucky or is this pretty common?