YouTube today launched supervised kid accounts the Middle East and North Africa region.
This comes shortly after the UAE announced a social media ban on children under the age of 15, in an effort to curb the presence of children on such platforms.
These new accounts allow parents to control their children’s viewing experience, and are built directly into the YouTube app. Supervised kid accounts come with three content settings for parents to choose from.
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What these accounts include
Content settings will allow parents to choose between ‘Explore’, which includes educational content, tutorials, arts and crafts and dance; ‘Explore more’, which also includes gaming and live streams, and most of YouTube, which contains almost all videos on YouTube except for those rated 18+ or deemed inappropriate for supervised accounts.
These accounts even include a Shorts feed timer, which allows parents to set daily time limits for scrolling the Shorts feed. The feed can also be completely turned off, by setting the Shorts timer to zero.
Some built-in controls also include ‘take a break’ and ‘bedtime’ reminders, disabling content creation or writing comments, and no autoplay.
Personal ad targeting is also not permitted on these channels.
The kid accounts announced today join supervised teen accounts, already available across the region. Teen accounts are a voluntary experience that allow young people to explore most of YouTube, while facilitating open conversations with parents. Teen accounts include easy account linking for parents and teens; timely email notifications that inform parents if their teenager uploads a video or starts a live stream; and shared insights into their teenagers channel activity.
