Image: YouTube
YouTube announced today that it will be introducing new options for parents of tweens and teens. The parental controls will give tweens and teens more freedom than a YouTube Kids account but will allow parents to give limited access to the content on YouTube.
YouTube Kids was launched in 2015, giving parents a safe option for allowing children to watch limited content with parental controls. The new “supervise accounts” are designed for kids who have outgrown that dedicated app. “As children grow up, they have insatiable curiosity and need to gain independence and find new ways to learn, create, and belong,” YouTube shared in the announcement.
The new experience will start with beta testing in the coming months that will allow parents to give kids access to YouTube through a supervised Google Account to determine content settings and provide limited features.
YouTube will give parents three options for content settings:
- Explore: For children ready to move on from YouTube Kids and explore content on YouTube, this setting will feature a broad 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 it includes sensitive topics that may only be appropriate for older teens.
With this updated YouTube experience, the app will look the same, but some features will be disabled. YouTube won’t show personalized ads or ads in certain categories (political ads, illegal or regulated products, violent content, etc.) The company says in-app purchases, content creation, and comments will also be disabled when the experience launches, but could be added later as YouTube works “with parents and experts to add some of these features through an age-appropriate and parent controlled approach.”