YouTube released updates to its child-focused YouTube Kids service that will allow parents to have more control over the content that their young ones can access.
Since the YouTube Kids app was released in February, it has been downloaded over 8 million times, according to a post on the official YouTube blog. However, the app was also subjected to criticism, leading to a complaint by the Federal Trade Commission regarding the search feature of YouTube Kids.
For YouTube Kids, the videos to be included in the service are selected and then organized into different categories such as Music, Shows, Explore and Learning. However, the search feature inadvertently allowed children to access videos that are not added to the service and organized into one of the YouTube Kids categories. This could be disabled under the parental controls section of the app, but most parents do not seem to know that the option exists.
In the blog post, YouTube said that one change coming to YouTube Kids is an explanation to parents on how the videos for the service are chosen, and how videos that could be inappropriate for children could be flagged. The app will also ask parents on how much access they want to give their child, either by granting them the ability to have the search feature turned on or turning off the feature so that the viewing experience is limited.
In addition, YouTube Kids will also now begin to offer a customized passcode as opposed to a spelled-out code, with the option accessible through parental controls.
However, YouTube reminds parents that "no system is perfect," emphasizing the need for parents to flag videos that they see on the service that would be cause of concern. Such participation in the service will not only make YouTube Kids better for the parent and the child, but for all the users of the service.
The need for parents to help out in curating the videos that find their way into YouTube Kids stems from the fact that YouTube continues to grow at an incredible pace, with videos of hundreds hours being uploaded to the website every minute. YouTube filters these videos though human review, user input and algorithmic filtering, but there are still some videos that could slip through the cracks and find their way into YouTube Kids.
