YouTube has announced an expansion of its parental control features, adding the ability to link a parent account to a teen account. This new feature will allow parents to gain insight into their children’s activity on the platform without directly viewing the content itself.
“Linking accounts will allow parents to receive notifications about the number of uploads, subscriptions, and comments a teen has made,” the company wrote in its blog post. Parents will also receive email notifications about important events, such as when a new video is uploaded to both YouTube and YouTube Shorts, or when a live broadcast begins. They will also be able to see any changes to a video’s privacy settings.
Maintaining Privacy and Personalization
It is noted that the new feature will not affect YouTube’s algorithm, which is already personalized for each user. “The fact of linking accounts will not affect the recommendations that a teen sees,” YouTube representatives clarified in a conversation with TechCrunch. It is important to note that when linking accounts, parents will not be able to change the age of the teen indicated during registration. YouTube will rely on the information that the teen entered when creating their profile.
This feature is an extension of parental controls that YouTube introduced in 2021. At that time, the company launched test “supervised” accounts for children “under the age of consent” to use online services (in the US, this age is 13, in other countries the age may be different) and promised to expand this feature to older age groups, which is happening now.
The development of parental control tools is associated with growing attention to children’s safety on the Internet and tightening legislation in this area. Some US states, such as Utah and Arkansas, have already passed laws restricting children under 18 from accessing social networks without parental consent. Other social platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook have also implemented similar parental control features.
Although YouTube is not always perceived as a social network, it offers similar features such as user profiles, the ability to subscribe to creators, comment on videos and access entertaining content selected by algorithms, notes NIX Solutions. These new parental control features aim to strike a balance between teen privacy and parental oversight.
As this is an evolving feature, we’ll keep you updated on any further developments or changes to YouTube’s parental control options. The platform continues to adapt to the changing landscape of online safety for younger users while maintaining its core functionality and user experience.