YouTube is announcing ‘supervised experiences’, a new set of restrictions that allow parents to better control what content their children can access on the streaming video platform. According to a blog post, YouTube hopes with the filters to help parents slowly introduce their older children to age-appropriate content and features outside of the YouTube Kids app. The program will launch first with an early beta, with a wider beta rolling out “in the coming months.”
Parents can choose from three strictness levels, which determine what content a child can view on their account. There is the “Explore” level, which YouTube says is “generally appropriate” for kids nine and older, “Explore More”, which is designed for kids 13 and older; and “Most of YouTube,” which is pretty much everything except age-restricted content. In the US and most other countries, people over the age of 13 can create their own YouTube accounts without supervision.
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It’s not clear exactly what content is allowed at which levels, but YouTube says the Explore level will include “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 aforementioned “Explore” categories. The company says that “most of YouTube” contains “sensitive topics that may only be suitable for older teens.”
Despite all its promises, YouTube’s supervised experiences is still a system that relies on user input, human assessment and machine learning. YouTube knows it won’t be perfect, and admits it will “make mistakes,” which is what we’ve seen with the Kids app. As such, parents shouldn’t think of it as a ‘set it and forget it’. They will still have to remain vigilant.
Nonetheless, the new content options should help parents with children who feel too limited by the Kids app (which YouTube still recommends for younger children), but are too sensitive 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 their kids do it more easily.