YouTube announces supervised content, more parental control

Over the last year, we've worked with parents and experts across the globe in areas related to child safety, child development, and digital literacy to develop a solution for parents of pre-teens and teens

San Francisco: Google-owned video-streaming platform YouTube has unveiled a new feature that would help parents to control what their kids watch on the platform by enabling different content settings on the platform.

The new feature will give parents the ability to choose from Explore, Explore More and Most of YouTube.

“Over the last year, we’ve worked with parents and experts across the globe in areas related to child safety, child development, and digital literacy to develop a solution for parents of pre-teens and teens,” James Beser, Director of Product Management, Kids and Family, YouTube, said in a blogpost on Wednesday.

“In the coming months, we’ll launch a new experience in beta for parents to allow their children to access YouTube through a supervised Google Account,” Beser added.

“Explore” will feature a broad range of videos generally suitable for viewers who are more than nine years old, including vlogs, tutorials, gaming videos, music clips, news, educational content and more.

“Explore More” will include an even larger set of videos and also live streams in the same categories as “Explore.”

“Most of YouTube” 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.

“This supervised experience will come with content settings and limited features. We’ll start with an early beta for families with kids under the age of consent to test and provide feedback, as we continue to expand and improve the experience,” the company said.