YouTube strengthens youth safety: news and guidelines

YouTube has announced the implementation of new security measures to protect young users. These new initiatives are being introduced on Safer Internet Day, a global event dedicated to promoting online safety. YouTube is collaborating with teen health experts to ensure a safer and healthier online environment for young people.

Updates to “Take a Break” and “Rest Time” features.

To promote mindful use of the platform, YouTube has introduced new alerts and reminders for users. The “TakeaBreak” and “Rest Time” features are now available in all regions and are enabled by default for teens and younger children. These full-screen alerts will appear both while watching short videos (“Shorts”) and during long videos. In addition, the “Take a Pause” alert will automatically activate every 60 minutes.

Video autoplay has been turned off by default for teen users and supervised accounts. This measure aims to reduce the amount of time younger users spend on the platform and promote more conscious usage.

YouTube strengthens protections for vulnerable users

In order to provide greater protection for vulnerable users, YouTube is expanding content safeguards in more regions. In collaboration with its Youth and Family Advisory Board, YouTube has identified certain categories of content that could be problematic for some teens if viewed repeatedly. These categories include physical comparison content that idealizes certain physical characteristics, fitness levels or body weights over others, as well as social aggression content that displays nonphysical fights or intimidation.

YouTube is restricting repeated video recommendations related to these categories of content for teens in the United States and will soon extend these restrictions to other countries during 2024.

This measure aims to prevent young users from embarking on a dangerous and potentially harmful path within the platform by promoting a safer and healthier online environment.

New Mental Health Report.

In collaboration with theWorld Health Organization (WHO) and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), YouTube has released a new report that provides guidelines for creating appropriate mental health content for adolescents and suggestions on effective communication strategies. The report aims to promote greater awareness and understanding of mental health issues among young YouTube users.

This report adds to YouTube’s already robust safeguards for teen users, providing parents with more tools to manage what their children are exposed to on the platform.

Additional YouTube Safety Tools.

In addition to the measures described above, YouTube also offers a number of safety tools for parents and young users. Some of these tools include:

• Kids Mode: YouTube Kids is a dedicated version for children that offers age-appropriate content and safety filters.
• Time Control: YouTube offers the ability to set daily or weekly usage time limits.
• Search Filters: Search filters can be activated to limit results to age-appropriate content.
• Content Reporting: Users can report inappropriate or offensive content to help maintain a safe environment on YouTube.

It is important for parents and legal guardians to learn about these tools and use them to protect young users while browsing YouTube.