YouTube is frustratingly vague about what its standards are for filtering this content, stating only that: YouTube Kids is a separate YouTube app/platform, which filters content from YouTube and brings it to children. Parents can choose between YouTube Kids for under-4 year-olds, 4-8 year-olds, and 8-12 year-olds. These problems caused a lot of dissatisfaction among parents regarding YouTube’s Restricted Mode, so YouTube decided to make YouTube Kids. Many parents don’t want their children exposed to religious content, political content, toy unboxing videos, manipulative ads, violent video games, and/or a wide range of other types of content that can have a harmful effect on young people, especially little kids. The second problem with Restricted Mode is that it’s not customizable. Restricted Mode may block billions of videos, but the problem is that disturbing content is uploaded to YouTube every minute. When I compared my search results with Restricted Mode turned off to my search results with Restricted Mode turned on, I could see that Restricted Mode was filtering out a ton of content - but it’s a little bit like trying to filter the Mississippi River with a colander. While this seems like a pretty comprehensive list, there are a couple of issues with YouTube’s Restricted Mode.įirst, YouTube’s automatic filters just don’t work very well. I was able to easily discover videos featuring every single one of the supposedly blocked categories after just a few minutes of browsing YouTube with Restricted Mode turned on.īut that doesn’t mean that Restricted Mode isn’t completely worthless!
Profane and mature language, including racial slurs, swear words, and other adult language.Discussion of/depictions of terrorism, war, crime, and violent political conflicts.Graphic violence, including natural disasters, war, disturbing news reports, and crime.Explicit sexual content (including discussion or actual depictions of sex).Here are the types of content that are blocked in YouTube’s Restricted Mode: Videos that other YouTube users have flagged as inappropriate also won’t show up when using Restricted Mode. YouTube’s Restricted Mode is designed to filter out a wide variety of inappropriate content, using automated filtering that looks at a video’s metadata and title, as well as language used in the video. Restricted Mode is better suited for pre-teens and teens, whereas YouTube Kids is tailored for pre-school and early elementary age kids.īoth of these restrictions can help, but oftentimes, they don’t do enough to truly keep kids safe when using YouTube. YouTube gives two primary options to keep kids safe from inappropriate content - Restricted Mode and YouTube Kids. YouTube’s Child Restrictions Aren’t Very Secure That’s why relying on YouTube’s filters isn’t good enough. But there are some pretty simple techniques that you can use to ensure your kids don’t stumble across the millions of hours of inappropriate content on YouTube in 2022. What’s even more worrying is that a lot of these videos are actually targeted at young children, using popular characters, misleading titles, and search-engine-optimized language to maximize views from young children who don’t know any better.
But dozens of reports have been published showing the staggering amount of vulgar, violent, and disturbing content that YouTube’s automated filters fail to catch.
YouTube has a couple of solutions - including “Restricted Mode” on conventional YouTube and also the curated YouTube Kids app, both of which are meant to filter out adult content. There are several billion YouTube videos (500+ hours of video are uploaded every minute), and 2 billion users log into YouTube every month - so how do we filter out all of the violent, sexual, manipulative, hateful, and otherwise unsuitable content that our kids find on YouTube (frequently on accident)?
Keeping kids away from inappropriate YouTube content can feel overwhelming. What Are the Best Ways to Fully Protect Your Kids Online? (Hint: It’s More Than Just Limiting Screen Time).What Are the Best Ways to Keep YouTube Safe for Kids?.YouTube’s Child Restrictions Aren’t Very Secure.