YouTube and other social media platforms are ramping up their parental controls as the online safety of minors continues to be a hot topic internationally.
The Google-owned platform announced on Wednesday that it’s implementing additional parental controls, particularly around the amount of time their children and teens spend watching YouTube Shorts.
Parents will now be able to set a timer for how much time children’s connected accounts can spend watching Shorts — YouTube’s equivalent of TikToks or Instagram Reels — helping to limit the potential to waste time with mindless scrolling.
Parents can even block accounts from watching Shorts altogether — either permanently, or temporarily, like if a kid is supposed to be using YouTube to study for a test by watching educational content.
YouTube will also allow parents to set custom Bedtime and Take a Break reminders, which encourage users to stop watching videos. These features are also available for adults, who can opt to set their own limits and reminders.
For parents who also use YouTube, it can be challenging to move back and forth between an adult’s account and kid’s account — unless if you want your algorithm to be forever usurped by Bluey. In the coming weeks, YouTube says it will update the sign up experience within the app to make it easier for parents and kids to toggle between their accounts with just a few taps… of course, that requires the parent or child to actually remember to make the switch.
These features build upon YouTube’s existing parental controls for teens, which include the ability to supervise a teen’s channel activity if they’re making content. This has become industry standard, as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook have similar controls.
Last year, YouTube also unveiled age-estimation technology to predict if an account belongs to a teen so that it can provide a more age-appropriate experience.
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