If you have children between the age of 3 and 13 chances are you have streamed a show on YouTube Kids. The popular site has more than 11 million weekly viewers and offers a variety of content.
But the site has been criticized for unintentionally recommending disturbing videos to children. YouTube announced some changes this week to give parents more control.
Starting this week, parents will be able to select “trusted channels” and specific topics. Those topics have been chosen and organized by people at YouTube Kids and its partners.
Parents will now be allowed to restrict video recommendations to channels that have been “verified”. This avoids the broader mass of content that the app pulls from the YouTube site through algorithms and other automated selection processes. The ultimate result for parents: more control over what their kids are watching.
YouTube said in a post on its blog that the changes will provide “a more robust suite of tools for parents to customize the YouTube Kids experience”. Later this year parents will be able to handpick every video and channel kids can see through the app.
For more information on YouTube Kids’ changes check out its blog:
