YouTube adjusts youth protection: Three updates for teen and child accounts

YouTube is refining its youth protection settings with an update that brings three changes. They are all intended to improve or facilitate parental control options for child and teen accounts. One of the changes is also advertised as an “industry first”: the platform's own short video format, "Shorts," can now be allowed by adults for teen accounts on a minute-by-minute basis but can also be effectively removed from the offering by setting it to “zero minutes.” The updates are rolling out now – in phases and depending on the region.

Since the EU Commission is already investigating YouTube on suspicion of insufficient child protection and the European Parliament is calling for a minimum age of 16 for video platforms and social media, YouTube's move can also be understood as a reaction to this critical overall situation.

Demand for protection settings

The global head of YouTube Health, Dr. Garth Graham, presented the innovations in a briefing for European media. He began by explaining that YouTube wants to protect children *in* the digital world, but not *from* the digital world; meaning, it wants to adapt environments and not keep young people away wholesale.

Graham pointed out that YouTube had already reacted to the protection wishes of experts and parents with the offering “YouTube Kids” about ten years ago and is continuously working on improvements. Currently, there is also a lively debate in Europe about youth protection measures on the internet.

The high acceptance of measures in Europe among parents is evident, for example, from the fact that 77 percent of European parents use YouTube's youth protection control systems, and 73 percent of them are convinced that they are creating a safer environment for their children with them. With the updates now announced, YouTube aims to further differentiate and facilitate parental control options.

The first innovation is unlikely to please the teenagers who watch content on YouTube Shorts (short vertical videos), which is often already created and distributed on social media platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram and was actually forbidden or blocked by parents. Now parents can reduce the time spent consuming these Shorts on YouTube to zero minutes per day. In addition, parents can set a bedtime and a “take a break” reminder for their teenagers.

The second innovation is intended to help ensure that young people are shown higher-quality content or can recognize it better. For this purpose, YouTube is working with organizations such as Save the Children International or UCL to classify relevant content as recommended. The criteria for recommended content are: Joy, Fun and Entertainment, Curiosity and Inspiration, Deepening Interests and Perspectives, Building Life Skills and Experiences, and Credible Information that Supports Well-Being. They were developed in collaboration with the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at the University of California (UCLA); supported by experts from University College London (UCL), the American Psychological Association (APA), and Boston Children's Hospital. As an example of enriching content in the German-speaking region, YouTube mentions the formats “Kurzgesagt – in a nutshell” and “Breaking Lab”.

So that content creators can also produce videos along these criteria, YouTube has created a corresponding guide called “Creating for Teens” (PDF). Professor Peter Fonagy, Head of the Department of Psychology and Language Sciences at UCL, explains: “The mental health of children and adolescents is a global concern, and in the digital age, the content teenagers encounter online can have both positive and negative effects. These YouTube quality principles for teenagers provide content creators with a practical, science-based guide for creating videos that are age-appropriate, emotionally safe, and truly supportive of young people.

UCL was very pleased to partner in this program to contribute evidence-based insights into adolescent development and to ensure that content creators understand their broader responsibility to help teenagers develop positively while minimizing potential harm.”

Making settings easier

The third innovation concerns the settings in YouTube accounts for families (Family Center). These are to be easier to set up and use in the future; with multiple children, switching between accounts should also become smoother. Graham referred to examples like Netflix and Disney, which clearly display adult and child profiles together in a start view.

Families who already use Google's “Family Link” child protection app can continue to make settings through it, which will also affect the use of YouTube, Graham explained to heise online. Using the YouTube app's Family Center is simply the more direct way. YouTube differentiates between children and adolescents by age group.

Children under 13 years of age in Germany can use YouTube Kids (separate app) or the regular YouTube app with parental restrictions if they are added there in the Family Center with a child account. Adolescents aged 13 and over are registered as teen accounts in the Family Center. YouTube is currently testing automatic age detection of users via AI and machine learning to exclude adolescents who provide incorrect age information from using the platform.

(kbe)