Online video-sharing platform YouTube is launching a new feature that would let parents control what their children can watch
As per The Verge, YouTube’s upcoming feature called ‘supervised experiences’, will come with a new set of restrictions that allows parents to better control what content their children can access on the video platform. According to a blog post, YouTube hopes that the filter will help parents slowly introduce their older children to age-appropriate content and features outside of the YouTube Kids app.
The mode will launch first with an early beta, with a wider beta rolling out “in the coming months.”
Parents have three levels of strictness to choose from, which determines the content a child is allowed to view on their account.
There is the ‘Explore’ level, which YouTube said is “generally suitable” for kids nine and up. ‘Explore More’, which is meant for kids 13 and up, 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 make their own unsupervised YouTube accounts.
It is not clear exactly what content will be allowed at which levels, but YouTube said the ‘Explore’ level will have “vlogs, tutorials, gaming 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 said that ‘Most of YouTube’ will contain “sensitive topics that may only be appropriate for older teens.”
YouTube’s ‘supervised experiences’ feature is still a system that relies on user input, human review, and machine learning. YouTube knows it will not be perfect, admitting that it “will make mistakes,” which have been seen happen with the Kids app. As such, parents shouldn’t think of it as a “set it and forget it” solution.
