That feature isn't what I think the parent comment is asking for. What you've linked to is specifically YouTube Kids, and it's groups of channels whitelisted by the YouTube team. What I think the parent comment is asking for, and I want too, is full availability of all YouTube channels, but the ability to block everything except whitelisted channels. I agree, it's too niche a product. But I often think that people whose response to complaints about kids' access to inappropriate content is "you need to parent your kids" is fine, but I need the tools to do that! A tool like this would be a godsend.
Why is everyone saying this doesn't exist? It's right there on the linked page! It's called "Approved Content Only" and I assure you that it exists, it's a real feature, it works just like you want, I use it myself, my kids watch Primitive Technology and Smarter Every Day and they can't watch videos I don't whitelist.
It does have a few issues. It's not reliable in showing everything you allow, sometimes things are missing for no reason, other times it will prevent you from whitelisting a video because it contains product placement (why does Google get to decide that for me? I'm an adult and can choose what level of product placement is acceptable for my kids). But it is a true whitelist mode and won't show other videos, just as requested.
YT kids uses a separate app, with a different UI. It's branded as YouTube Kids. And once your kid hits a certain age, they do not want to be on the kids version.
Another approach... Is to mark their kids account as a kids account or something, and have that just be on the regular YouTube website and app.
Or what every parent really wants.
To whitelist content your kid can watch like in YT Kids. But also include blacklisting shorts.
The more this looks like regular YouTube. The better your chances of your kid not just signing out of the app. Or using a web browser with a logged out account to circumvent it.
You have to give some illusion in order to maintain the control.
> And once your kid hits a certain age, they do not want to be on the kids version.
Who's in charge here, you or your kids? Sure, maybe you could imagine a teen YouTube product you might like more, but you can't say the whitelist feature doesn't exist. It's there and it works.
As a parent you're not in charge of a teenager. You're there to guide them, and try to protect them from their bad choices, but they have reached a point where they are beginning to control their self-determinism. They're not a kid anymore.
If you just try to act the authority, try to control everything, then well... You'll either end up in abusive land, or trying to control someone who has learnt to hate you for not treating them as a person who does have their own sense of self.
You are, in fact, in charge of your teenager as a parent. They are, in fact, still a kid. Controlling your kid’s access to things which you deem harmful is, in fact, not abusive. Setting appropriate boundaries does not, in fact, mean you are not treating your kid as a person who has their own sense of self. Most kids will not, in fact, hate you for setting boundaries and being their parent.
It is quite impressive that nearly everything you’ve typed is incorrect.
This is a terrible argument. You just repeated the claims and said that they're false, giving no reason to believe this over the claims that you're disagreeing with. If you want to convince anyone, you should explain how you came to the conclusion that these things are false.
They're no longer a child. That is why they have a different nomenclature - teenager. They are not "a kid".
Treating an adolescent as a child is damaging to their mental state [0].
I already said boundaries are a thing: You are there to guide them. But you are not there... To control them. Because doing so, is damaging. And as a parent, damaging your family is both heinous, and a crime.
To put it another way: The law sets boundaries on how you can drive. This guides you, to keep you and others safe. It does not however enforce control over you. Your choices are still your own. A parent aims to guide an adolescent, who is no longer a child.
This is an argument for not applying parental controls to YouTube for teenagers, while the guy I was replying to is explicitly asking for parental controls for YouTube for teenagers. I think "teenager" is too broad to have a productive discussion here. Maybe we can agree that sometime between 13 and 19 you should definitely stop trying to impose parental controls on your kids.
My parents did this to me, and while I loved them, I left home as quickly as I could at age 17 despite them more or less begging me to stay.
We are great now, it wasn't a huge issue or anything, but I wasn't going to stick around while my mom searched my whole room from top to bottom every week.
If you're lucky. That means they have a good moral compass and figured out that you were the anchor on their lives.
I'm especially worried about the point where parents are accompanying college students into their inerviews. Which is an slowly, but alarmingly rising phenomenon.
Yes, people exaggerate, but I have not gone to see mine in person since 2009 and I have not talked to them since 2016. In fact at uni, I initially didn't understand why anybody would want to go home for Christmas - it was many years later that I realised that my childhood wasn't normal.
Ok, once kids hit certain age, YouTube kids is mostly useless to them. As the most perfectly ok and even educational channels are just not there. Includes channels parent wants to give to the kid.
Oh, and if the kid is not English speaking, YouTube kids is a wasteland of nothingness.
> YT kids uses a separate app, with a different UI. It's branded as YouTube Kids. And once your kid hits a certain age, they do not want to be on the kids version.
>Why is everyone saying this doesn't exist? It's right there on the linked page!
Because you're whitelisting on videos that Youtube already filtered on. If there's some form of content that is not on Youtube Kids that you want to whitelist, you're out of luck.
>why does Google get to decide that for me? I'm an adult and can choose what level of product placement is acceptable for my kids
> If there's some form of content that is not on Youtube Kids that you want to whitelist, you're out of luck.
This is false too. You can add almost any channel or any video on YouTube by using the YouTube app on your phone to "share" it to your kids.
As I said, it will refuse on some videos that contain product placement, and there are probably a few other restricted categories, but otherwise you are not restricted to sharing pre-filtered "kid" videos.
Edit: I just noticed the list of supported countries (in my link below) includes Canada but excludes the French-speaking province of Quebec. It seems a bit spiteful to go so far as to ensure a service can be legally delivered in such a long list of countries and then exclude Quebec. Hm, I was about to use Puerto Rico as an example, but it’s not in the list as well, but perhaps it’s considered part of the United States here.
Now back to the comment I’d written at first:
It does seem to be, in typical large corporation fashion, a bit too complicated to set up. For example, there are three ways to add parental supervision, including a mode where you can transition from YouTube Kids to the full YouTube experience while still preserving those controls until a child is 13: https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/10495678?sjid=...
That said, all it would take is an open web browser and a not signed in YouTube account for kids to bypass these controls. But I suppose that’s not actually the point - the point of channel filtering is to reduce the harm recommendation engines and spammy content might have. The gotcha is that recommendation engines are everywhere now, spammy content is pervasive, and even AI responses in Google are arguably now a source of noise to be filtered.
I will say, however, it’s great to have an ad-free family plan for YouTube. I wish you could add more accounts to it, but for now I’m getting by with YouTube brand (sub-)accounts to create separate lists of subscriptions, histories and recommendations while still staying ad-free in apps.
And tools adults might find useful, I expect kids and teens would find useful too - for example, browser extensions to customize your YouTube experience.
As long as we have an open web for e.g. YouTube, we do have independent options, if geeky enough to pursue them. :)
Unfiltered web browsers might be harder to come by these days than when I was growing up, but they still exist. I remember finding out by accident that certain restricted apps would pull up help pages, and from there I could click a link that would take me to an unrestricted web browser due to a bug in the code. I also remember computers where you could show up with pocket apps on a floppy or USB key and bring your own unrestricted web browser. On top of that, just because the web is restricted often doesn’t mean YouTube is restricted. For example, schools need YouTube to show educational content, so it often is unrestricted even when the rest of the web is restricted e.g. by dns.
Not only that, but YouTube kids whitelists a ton of content I never want my kids watching, while exempting a decent chunk of things I'd be tickled pink if my kids watched.
I don't want em watching cocomelon, I want them watching Steve Mould
I don't think it is that niche. I think lots of people would take advantage of it not just for their kids, but themselves.
The problem is that it is a feature that makes YouTube less "sticky" and thus there is economic incentive against implementing it due to lack of competition in that area. (Their competitors also want to maximize stickiness.)
I want the Netflix version of this. An account that is completely empty except for shows that I add. And not for kids, I just want an empty library that I can fill myself.
I was going to say - Netflix has functionality to do exactly this but only for kids accounts. You can hand pick which shows appear on each child account.
Your first sentence is plain wrong and your second only begs the question. It's as if you're just trying to distract from the content of my comment with sheer semantic disingenuity. But maybe you missed my point so:
The older the kid, the less I'll filter their content. I'll make sure that a 5 year old only has specific channels to access. A 16 year old is more around a point where I'm only worried about scams and propaganda instead of finding a curse word in one video.
