YouTube is planning on launching a kid-friendly version of its video-streaming app, able to run on smartphones and tablets and allow children to watch episodes of their favorite TV shows, including Thomas the Tank Engine and Sesame Street.
The app will appropriately be called YouTube Kids and will launch on Feb. 23. It will have four main categories: Shows, Music, Learning and Explore.
"Parents were constantly asking us, can you make YouTube a better place for our kids," said Shimrit Ben-Yair, product manager of the group behind the project. "[Year over year] we've seen 50 percent growth in viewing time on YouTube, but for our family entertainment channels, it's more like 200 percent."
It is expected that the kid-friendly project will be discussed more at a keynote speech on Monday at the Kidscreen Summit.
The app will also include features for parents to, for example, be able to set a timer on how long their child can spend watching videos on YouTube. When the timer runs out, the app will turn off and cannot be opened again without a password, which will have been set by the parent. Not only that, but any search that would otherwise lead to child-inappropriate content will instead lead to a message telling the child to "try something else."
The app was first announced in December, with Google saying that it wanted to create more for those "12 and under."
It is unclear how Google will be making money through this service or whether the service will advertise in the same way that it does on the regular app. While it is certainly possible, Google would have to be much more careful with the ads that it places.
Of course, Google has had to remove a number of features from the service. Comments have been removed from the kid-friendly YouTube, and the interface makes use of much larger images and buttons.
Google will also have to obtain permissions from parents in order to track what children are doing, according to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which states that websites are required to obtain parental consent before tracking or gathering information about children below 13 years old. Google has to refund a massive $19 million to parents whose children had unknowingly bought apps from the Google Play Store.
Kid-friendly apps and services are gaining popularity. Vine Kids was released last month, offering animated videos that are appropriate for children to watch. It is likely that the kid-friendly category will continue to grow in the near future.
