As our kids get older, there are certainly content concerns to worry about when it comes to YouTube and the internet in general. However, the stress of what our younger ones can find is also a worry, and YouTube has recognized this. They have been making big changes in order to help parents control what their kids see, and they did that by updating some of their YouTube kids security features.
The company, according to their blog post, will allow parent-controlled content as well as net-new experience for older kids.
Parents can choose every single YouTube video and channel available to their children, and they simply have to open settings, go to their child’s profile, and select “approved content only” to do this. You can then start picking approved videos for your kids by pressing the “+” button, and the statement says that parents can also search for a specific creator or video.
“If parents choose to enable this mode, their kids will not be able to search for content on their own,”
The feature is only available on Androids at the moment, but will be coming to iOS soon.
The second big change is the new user experience aimed at kids aged 8 to 12, and it includes new music and gaming content. Parents can select the option “Older” when setting up a new profile or updating an existing one. If they don’t the “Younger” version, the default one, still has the same selection of age-appropriate content for kids.
The company wrote:
“We work hard to make videos in the app family friendly, but no system is perfect. It’s always possible that a parent may find something they don’t want their child to watch in the “Younger” or “Older” experiences. If this happens, we ask that parents block and flag the video for review by our team. This makes YouTube Kids better for everyone.”
Knowing what our kids are really watching online is becoming more and more difficult to manage, so it’s nice to see that companies like YouTube continue to innovate in these areas.