YouTube to launch parental control features for families with tweens and teens –
Summary
The company says it’s preparing to launch a beta test of new features that will give parents the ability to grant kids more limited access to YouTube through a “supervised” Google Account. YouTube says it will use a combination of user input, machine learning and human review to curate which videos are included in each of the three different content settings. Of course, much like YouTube Kids, that means this will not be a perfect system — it’s a heavily machine-automated attempt at curation where users will still have to flag videos that were improperly filtered. This slightly more locked-down experience lets parents give the child access to “real YouTube” with restrictions on what that actually means, in terms of content and features. YouTube, in an announcement, shared several endorsements for the new product from a few individual youth experts, including Leslie Boggs, president of National PTA; Dr. Yalda Uhls, Center for Scholars & Storytellers, UCLA and author of “Media Moms & Digital Dads”; Thiago Tavares, founder and president of SaferNet Brazil; and Professor Sun Sun Lim, Singapore University of Technology & Design and author of “Transcendent Parenting.” YouTube’s news, notably, follows several product updates from fast-growing social video app and YouTube rival TikTok, which has rolled out a number of features aimed at better protecting its younger users.