YouTube has added two new features to its Kids app, both of which give parents more control over what their children are watching. First, parents now have the option to limit what their kids watch to just what they approve. After parents select "approved content only" in their child's profile, that child won't be able to search for content on their own. Instead they'll have access to the videos, channels or collection of channels their parents have specifically added to their approved list.
YouTube announced this feature back in April and it's available now on Android globally. Most videos in this category are either live action films or crude 2D animations, although a few channels have been using more elaborate techniques such as clay animation, or 3D animation. Despite YouTube's age restriction policies, these videos are sometimes tagged in such a way as to circumvent the inbuilt child safety algorithms, even making their way into YouTube Kids, and are thus difficult to moderate due to the large scale of the platform. In order to capture search results and attract attention from users, their titles and descriptions feature names of famous characters, as well as keywords like "education", "learn colors", "nursery rhymes", etc. They also include automatically placed ads, making them lucrative to their owners and YouTube.
Despite the objectionable and often confusing nature of these videos, many attract millions of views. AlgoTransparency regularly indexes the kids' videos most likely to be recommended by YouTube. Since the backlash in 2017, YouTube has outlined steps it is taking to improve safety on its Kids app. There are also a number of other ways for parents to make the app safer, but non of them are automatic.
While criticism of the channels themselves has existed since at least 2012, public awareness of the phenomenon grew in 2017, as mainstream media started to report about child safety on YouTube. That year, after reports by several media outlets, YouTube adopted stricter guidelines regarding children's content. In late November, the company started to mass-delete channels and videos falling into the Elsagate category, as well as large amounts of other inappropriate videos or user's comments relating to children. Underlying all of this is the fact that kids' content has been quite lucrative for YouTube, even as the site claims it's intended for teens and adults. YouTube keeps 45 percent of its videos' advertising dollars, with the other 55 percent going to video creators.
One research firm estimated YouTube's revenue from children's media could be between $500 million and $750 million per year — a giant sum of money, but still a drop in the bucket of YouTube's total earnings. Meanwhile, YouTube has maintained that children should only be using YouTube Kids, a separate app that does not use targeted ads, even as children's content makes up many of the regular site's most popular channels. Animated nursery-rhyme content factories like Cocomelon, ChuChu TV, and Little Baby Bum — whose videos seemingly no one but very young children would ever want to watch — each have total channel views between 19 and 45 billion. Select the "Approved Content Only" mode if you want to handpick the videos, channels and/or collections that you've approved your child to watch. The "Preschool" Mode designed for kids 4 and under curates videos that promote creativity, playfulness, learning, and exploration. The "Younger" Mode allows kids 5-8 to explore their interests in a wide variety of topics including songs, cartoons, and crafts.
While our "Older" Mode gives kids 9 and up the chance to search and explore additional content such as popular music and gaming videos for kids. For stricter controls on smart devices, try the YouTube Kids app for iOS and Android phones and tablets. It's a completely different, kid-friendly interface that gives parents the opportunity to view channels and videos that have been reviewed by real people to make sure they're safe for kids. We especially like this feature, as it taps into a crowdsourced means of viewership rather than a robot. You can also adjust the age settings within the app to allow older kids to view content they might be ready for but a younger child may not. It is a standalone app aimed at delivering suitable, age-appropriate, content to children.
Essentially, it is a filtered subsection of YouTube's greater body of videos, which allows users to select limitations on how, and where, children find videos to watch. Instead, the content that appears on the app is predominantly filtered by computer algorithm. However, videos featuring inappropriate content, designed to appear child-friendly, have been reported to have slipped through these algorithms, prompting YouTube to design some parental filter option changes to the platform. The only human input on YouTube's side is to monitor the app for inappropriate content, a spokesperson for YouTube told me. YouTube Kids last year featured a video that showed Mickey Mouse-esque characters shooting one another in the head with guns, Today reported. Although the site's recommendations drive a significant share of its users' time on the site, the inner workings of the algorithm itself are largely opaque.
To further understand the nature of the video recommendations on YouTube, the Center conducted a companion analysis of the videos suggested by the site's recommendation algorithm. To do this, we conducted more than 170,000 "random walks" through the videos recommended to viewers of popular YouTube channels using the site's public application programming interface over a six-week period in summer 2018. The survey also illustrates the prominent role the site's recommendations play in its users' consumption habits.
These "up next" videos are selected by the site's algorithm and appear alongside or below the video viewers are currently watching. Depending on a user's individual settings, these videos may play automatically once the video they are watching has finished. Some 81% of YouTube users say they at least occasionally watch the videos suggested by the platform's recommendation algorithm, including 15% who say they do this regularly, according to the survey.
Consider creating a separate channel off your own YouTube account for your kids that they can switch to easily before they start viewing. When you're logged on to your YouTube/Google account and on the YouTube homepage, access your YouTube settings. Under Additional Features at the bottom, select See All My Channels or Create a New Channel.
Once created, you'll be able to access it by clicking your profile picture in the top right corner and selecting your kid's new channel. Before you hand it over, though, you'll need to go in, clean up the default content and curate to suit your preferences. Go through and delete the categories you don't want, block out specific channels completely or set up subscriptions to channels you trust. Once done, you can simply teach your child to stick to the subscriptions and categories you've set up.
Be sure to check your kid's history often and filter out anything you don't want him to see. In August 2017, YouTube announced its new guidelines on content and monetization. In an ongoing series of efforts to demonetize controversial and offensive videos, it was announced that creators would no longer be able to monetize videos that "made inappropriate use of family friendly characters". In November of the same year, it announced that it would implement "a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged". In some cases, it appears that the titles of these videos may also change over time, suggesting attempts at search optimization that are intended to attract more recommendations or views. Although the magnitude of the effect is slightly different in each case, this general relationship held true regardless of whether the initial video was chosen based on date posted, view count, relevance or user rating.
Even when starting on one of a channel's five most recent videos the recommendation algorithm consistently suggested more popular videos. By the fourth recommendation on walks starting from a channel's most recent videos, viewers were recommended videos with an average of nearly 33 million views. The findings also highlight YouTube's key role in providing content for children. Fully 81% of all parents with children age 11 or younger say they ever let their child watch videos on YouTube. And 34% of parents say their child watches content on YouTube regularly. It should be noted that YouTube explicitly states that the platform is not intended for children younger than 13, and that the site provides a YouTube Kids option for children that has enhanced parental controls.
All of that screen time means more exposure to advertisements, and researchers also found that their design was problematic. Banner ads blocked educational content, sidebars were designed to look like recommended video suggestions and some ads for video games showed "doctored versions" of popular children's characters like Peppa Pig in an effort to get kids to click. "We keep watch history associated with the app so we can offer content recommendations based on that watch history," a spokesperson said. "For example, a lot of kids like to re-watch their favourite videos and we want to make it easy for them to return to those videos and find other similar videos." That watch history can be deleted by parents in the app's settings menu. This fantastic service from Google, which launched in late 2015, is best for kids ages two to eight, so while older ones may not be interested in its filtered and curated content , this should be your first choice for the young'uns. If something unsavoury does make it past the filters, there's a simple reporting function to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Sadly, YouTube Kids isn't available for desktop or laptop computers—it's only an app. "We work to make the videos in YouTube Kids as family-friendly as possible and take feedback very seriously. We appreciate people drawing problematic content to our attention, and make it easy for anyone to flag a video," a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. "Flagged videos are manually reviewed 24/7 and any videos that don't belong in the app are removed within hours. For parents who want a more restricted experience, we recommend that they turn off the Search feature in the app."
By enabling this setting "videos that may contain inappropriate content flagged by users and other signals. No filter is 100 percent accurate, but it should help you avoid most inappropriate content," according to YouTube. When restricted mode is enabled, you will not be able to see comments on the videos you watch. Humphrey said there are simple steps parents can take to help protect their kids from watching inappropriate content, like activating parental controls on their child's favorite apps and devices. Overall, the majority of parents with children aged 11 or younger stated that they had ever let their child watch videos on YouTube, and almost two thirds stated that their child had encountered unsuitable content on the video platform. This recommendation engine poses a difficult task, simply because of the scale of the platform.
"YouTube recommendations are responsible for helping more than a billion users discover personalized content from an ever-growing corpus of videos," researchers at Google, which owns YouTube, wrote in a 2016 paper about the algorithm. That includes many hours of video uploaded to the site every second of every day. Like other content delivery algorithms, the YouTube recommendation engine attempts to customize its suggestions based on an individual user's prior activity and browsing behavior.
Thus, different users watching the same video might be served different recommendations based on the system's calculations of their interests. This study of YouTube's recommendation algorithm also reinforces the survey findings about the prominence of children's content on YouTube. All told, 134 unique videos were recommended more than 100 times during this analysis. And of the 50 individual videos that were encountered most frequently, 11 of them – or about a fifth of the most-recommended videos – were determined by researchers to be oriented toward children, based on their content. Indeed, an animated video for children was the single most recommended video in this analysis. A key finding of this analysis is that the YouTube recommendation system encourages users to watch progressively longer and more popular content.
The videos selected in the first step of these random walks averaged 9 minutes, 31 seconds in length. The first recommended video tied to this initial choice ran, on average, nearly three minutes longer. By the fifth and final step in these walks, the site recommended videos that averaged nearly 15 minutes in length.
But even as many users are turning to content on YouTube to help them understand the world and learn new things, large shares say they encounter negative experiences with content on the platform. Around two-thirds of users (64%) say they at least sometimes encounter videos that seem obviously false or untrue while using the site, while 60% at least sometimes encounter videos that show people engaging in dangerous or troubling behavior. And among parents who let their young child watch content on the site, 61% say they have encountered content there that they felt was unsuitable for children. The Morgans feel much better working with — and letting their children watch — more curated, kid-centric apps. The history of children's videos on YouTube is not a very happy one for most people involved. It is now a parenting rite of passage to watch toddlers quickly learn that pressing a few buttons on a screen can deliver hours' worth of rainbow-soaked animations that turn their brains into passive iPad receptacles.
Much like the panic over TV-glued children in the 1950s and '60s, today's parents are concerned over a far more unpredictable kind of screen time while also being thankful for its unique ability to keep kids quiet and docile. Have you ever attempted to coax a transfixed child out of their 900th viewing of "Johny Johny Yes Papa"? I have not, and I hope I'll never have to, because it sounds terrifying. "I swear no one at Google has kids—but is the primary source of truth for kids," says Doug Crawford, director of curriculum at Protect Young Eyes, an advocacy and education organization based in Michigan. If you decide that your children are not old enough for YouTube or YouTube kids you can simply block the app and show them that while YouTube may be the most popular and biggest site, they aren't the only one out there. There are plenty of streaming video apps that offer a variety of video sources, tighter curating, firmer parental controls and many handy, family-friendly attributes.
With one of these better streaming apps, you and your child probably won't even miss YouTube and YouTube Kids. Many parents and kids already go to YouTube searching for free, ad-supported educational videos or entertainment. The company's YouTube Kids app — dedicated to content for children — has an audience of 35 million weekly users. The second feature rolling out is a new setting meant for children aged eight to 12 years old.
Parents will now have two age options to choose from -- "younger" and "older" -- in their kid's settings, and those options impact what kind of content they're exposed to. This feature is rolling out now to US users but YouTube says it plans to expand it globally in the future. But, as a parent, when you let them dive into the weird corner of the internet that is YouTube, you want to make sure what they're watching is educational and worthwhile. Since then, our team has continued to work to improve the app experience for kids and families around the world. One area of focus has been building new features that give parents even more control around the content available in the YouTube Kids app so they can make the right choice for their unique family and for each child within their family. You still cannot "sign up" or link videos or share videos or post videos or submit videos to youtube kids .
In recent months, parents like Ms. Burns have complained that their children have been shown videos with well-known characters in violent or lewd situations and other clips with disturbing imagery, sometimes set to nursery rhymes. Many have taken to Facebook to warn others, and share video screenshots showing moments ranging from a Claymation Spider-Man urinating on Elsa of "Frozen" to Nick Jr. characters in a strip club. If you and your offspring prefer to watch videos on a tablet, a number of third-party apps provide the kind of granular blocking features that YouTube doesn't.
Although it has a slightly stark interface, YouTuze Pro Kids on Android makes it easy to whitelist specific channels, videos and playlists to keep a young child from seeing content that you've not personally approved. And while YouTube only allows content that meets the criteria of its 'restricted mode' – and not even all of that – onto the Kids platform, it's hard to guarantee that it's actually suitable for children. The scope of the issue is illustrated by Business Insider's discovery of conspiracy theory videos about lizard people, "chem trails" and human sacrifice when they searched the app for videos about UFOs. This analysis also illustrates how the site's recommendation engine steers users toward progressively more popular content as measured by view counts.
Collectively, the starting videos in this analysis had an average of just over 8 million views. But the first videos recommended by the algorithm were much more popular, with nearly 30 million views on average. And videos in the final step in these walks had an average of more than 40 million views. 28% of the unique videos in this dataset were recommended multiple times over the study period.
A majority of the recommended videos in this dataset were recommended just a single time. But 98,508 videos (or 28% of the total) were recommended more than once over the study period, suggesting that the recommendation algorithm points viewers to a consistent set of videos with some regularity. In fact, a small number of these videos were recommended more than 100 times. It may seem foreign to parents, but for kids, video is a fun way to communicate. All the coolest apps -- Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Messenger -- let users share video clips. So even though you may have concerns about the risks of broadcasting on the Web -- and they are legitimate -- your kid may see it as a way of expressing herself, learning digital video skills, sharing with friends, and experimenting creatively.
It's important to balance your concerns with the benefits she can reap. We work hard to keep the videos on YouTube Kids family-friendly and use a mix of automated filters built by our engineering teams, human review, and feedback from parents to protect our youngest users online. But no system is perfect and inappropriate videos can slip through, so we're constantly working to improve our safeguards and offer more features to help parents create the right experience for their families. If your appeal is unsuccessful, the made for kids audience setting will remain on your content.
Going forward, please review your channel and/or individual video's audience settings. Failure to set your audience appropriately may result in legal consequences under COPPA and/or other laws, or consequences on the YouTube platform. We'll also use machine learning systems to help us find content that is clearly made for kids. But please do not rely on our systems to set content for you -- like all automated systems, it's not perfect. We may need to override your audience setting choice in cases where we detect error or abuse. But in most cases, we'll rely on your audience setting to determine whether a video is made for kids.
For some kids, Murphy concedes, third-party parental controls might be necessary. For example, if your child has trouble distinguishing inappropriate content or if you suspect he might be the victim of cyberbullying, there is no shame in using third party parental controls or checking his search history. Set these boundaries if you need to, she continues, but try not to use them as a substitute for real conversations with your kids. While YouTube can be a great source of learning material, Crawford says parents need to keep in mind that its search function is inherently unsafe for kids—even if they're watching kid-friendly content.
