YouTube announces supervision solutions for parents

YouTube has worked with parents and experts of child safety and digital literacy to develop these solutions that enable parents to monitor their children's experience on YouTube with a supervised account.

In the coming months, YouTube will launch the supervised experience in a beta version for parents to allow their children to access YouTube through a supervised Google Account.

Along with the supervision solutions, YouTube will also be expanding the dedicated Kids app, along with improving restricting features and age restrictions.

This experience comes with content settings and limited features. The feature will kickstart with an early beta for families with kids under the age of consent to test and provide feedback. 

Content Options

• Explore: For children ready to move on from YouTube Kids and explore content on YouTube, this setting will feature a range of videos generally suitable for viewers ages 9+, including vlogs, tutorials, gaming videos, music clips, news, educational content, and more.
• Explore More: With content generally suitable for viewers ages 13+, this setting will include an even larger set of videos, and also live streams in the same categories as 'Explore'.
• Most of YouTube: This setting will contain almost all videos on YouTube, except for age-restricted content, and includes sensitive topics that may only be appropriate for older teens.

Also Read: YouTube to introduce pre-publish checks for creators

YouTube will use a mix of user input, machine learning and human review to determine which videos are included.

Account Settings

Parents can also manage watch and search history from within their child's account settings, along with selecting the content they wish their kid has access to. Controls offered by Google’s Family Link including screen timers can also be leveraged by the parents.

More parental controls such as tools that allow blocking certain content, will also be added by YouTube over the course of time.

When a parent grants access to YouTube, their child’s experience will feel much like regular YouTube, but certain features will be disabled to protect younger audiences. For example, we won't serve

Personalized ads or ads in certain categories won' be served to kids using the YouTube app with this limited experience. In-app purchases, creation, and comments features will also be disabled at launch.

YouTube Kids

The dedicated Kids app is the destination where kids can have an independent experience and is still advisable for use by younger kids.

YouTube mentions they will continue expanding product availability, adding new features, and offering new parental tools such as the one that allows parents to choose videos and channels from the main app that they'd like their children to watch on YouTube Kids.