YouTube is announcing “supervised experiences”, a new set of restrictions that allows parents to better control the content that their children can access on the video streaming platform. According to a blog post, YouTube hopes that filters will gradually help parents introduce their older children to age-appropriate content and resources outside of the YouTube Kids app. The program will be launched first with an early beta, with a broader beta being launched “in the coming months”.
Parents can choose between three levels of rigidity, which determines what content a child can see on their account. There is the “Explore” level, which YouTube says is “generally suitable” for children aged nine and older ‘“Explore more”, which is aimed at children aged 13 and up; and “Most of YouTube,” which is almost everything except age-restricted content. In the U.S. and most other countries, people over 13 can create their own unsupervised YouTube accounts.
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It is unclear exactly what content will be allowed at which levels, but YouTube says the “Explore” level will have “vlogs, tutorials, game videos, music clips, news, educational content and more”. As the name suggests, the “Explore more” level will have a wider range of videos, as well as live streams for the “Explore” categories mentioned earlier. The company claims that “Most of YouTube” will contain “sensitive topics that may be appropriate only for older teenagers”.
Despite all its promises, YouTube’s supervised experiences are still a system that depends on user input, human review and machine learning. YouTube knows that it will not be perfect, admitting that it will “make mistakes”, which we saw happening with the Kids app. As such, parents should not think of it as a “set it and forget it” solution. They will still need to remain vigilant.
However, the new content options should help parents of children who feel too confined to the Kids app (which YouTube still recommends for younger children), but are too impressionable to be exposed to the full YouTube experience. YouTube can be a dangerous place, full of misinformation and conspiracy, so it’s good to see Google giving parents tools to help facilitate their kids ’entry.