Navigating the digital world with your child

Parent Guidance for setting up YouTube Parental Controls

YouTube is considered a search engine, video-sharing platform, and social media platform all-in-one. It has a lot of features that support each type of content. When used safely and responsibly, YouTube provides children a wealth of opportunities to learn, stay entertained, create and play. However, with so much content available, how do you find the correct channels and videos? How do you ensure your child is safe while watching them? It’s important to have a shared family account for YouTube so you can easily track what videos are watched and suggested. YouTube includes settings to promote safety and wellbeing to keep children safe online.

Having a Supervised Account with your child YouTube has a minimum user age of 13. There is ‘YouTube kids’ for children under 13.

A Supervised Account helps children learn key online safety skills in safe online spaces.

Once you set up a Supervised Account for your child, you can customise the settings relevant to your child. As they age, you can change the content settings and more to provide themwith more freedom to explore their online space, helping them practise key online safety skills. If there is no access from your child on this account, there is a fair chance they have another account - do address this with them. Update content settings You can change the content levels to Explore (under-13s), Explore More (13+) or Most of YouTube (almost all content). Reduce the amount of time your child spends on YouTube Under general settings, there are various features that you can disable such as autoplay, watch history and search history. These features reduce howmuch content children are likely towatch. For instance, turning off autoplay helps themmove on after watching one video instead of falling into the habit of watching one video after another. Monitoring your child’s YouTube activity Monitoring your child’s YouTube activity means you gain insight into how they use their time online. You can use this as an opportunity to discuss and learn about their favourite creators. This creates a space of trust and openness while also helping you keep an eye out for any harmful content. Restricted Mode filters out mature content. YouTube’s restricted mode can help filter out mature content that poses potential harm to your child. Setting up restricted mode can help keep children safe online.

8