YouTube has announced a whole new host of parental controls to strengthen online safety for children while using their service, as per a blog post from the company on Wednesday.
These controls focus on content, age appropriate experience customisation, and time and attention management.
The most prominent feature includes the options for parents to set a time limit on the duration their child spends watching 'Shorts', the social media services' short form content.
Parents can set the feed limit all the way down to zero if they don't want their child lost in a never-ending deluge of short videos and can focus on their academics instead.
This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch.
Parents can also set 'Bedtime' and 'Take A Break' reminders for their children, which joins the lineup of existing options they have for teen well-being protections.
The firm has also introduced new principles and a creator guide, to guide teens to watch more fun, age-appropriate, high quality and "enriching" content. The principles developed in partnership with YouTube's Youth Advisory Committee and the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA and supported by global experts from the American Psychological Association, Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, and other global organisations, it said in a blog.
These principles will also inform YouTube's recommendation system, facilitating them to raise high quality videos such as those from Khan Academy, CrashCourse and TED-Ed - and increase the frequency of which they show up to teens.
In the coming weeks, the company will also unveil an updated sign up experience that allows parents to create a new kid account and seamlessly switch between accounts in the mobile application based on who's watching via a few taps.
"This makes it easier to ensure that everyone in the family is in the right viewing experience with the content settings and recommendations of age-appropriate content they actually want to watch," the post added.
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