How to Put Parental Controls on YouTube App.
YouTube is a great place to find interesting content. Whatever your taste, YouTube has a channel for you. However, more often than not, we also saw a lot of NSFW videos on YouTube. More than 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute, so all types of videos are featured on the platform.
Generally speaking, there are two types of NSFW videos on YouTube.
1. Adult videos that meet YouTube’s terms, such as childbirth, breastfeeding, or films that depict art of nudity.
2. Videos that are illegally uploaded to YouTube, such as hate speech, public violence, beheading videos uploaded by a terrorist group, etc.
While there are no full verification methods for blocking adult videos in a YouTube app or website, there are several things you can do to make YouTube safe for your kids.
Read: How to Block Porn on Android
Parental control on the official YouTube app
Although we recommend using the YouTube Kids app for better parental control; but if for some reason you get stuck in the YouTube app, below are a few settings you can tweak to take care of all the unwanted videos uploaded to YouTube.
YouTube has this feature, called limited mode, which automatically hides videos that may contain inappropriate content flagged by users and other signals. While it’s still far from perfect in my experience, if you have kids at home it’s important to include it.
1. Turn on “Restricted Mode”
Open the YouTube app on Android, iPhone or iPad click on the three vertical dots in the upper right corner. Then click Settings General Click Restricted Filtering and select Strict.
One big problem with Limited Mode is that just like you turned it on, anyone can turn it off with a simple push of a button. No PIN or password protection to keep kids from turning them off knowingly or unknowingly.
To turn off Restricted Mode in the desktop version of YouTube, you need to enter your Google password, to turn off this function, this option is not available in the YouTube app. In addition, this limited mode is based on data from crowdsourcing and several contract companies that manually tag each video after watching. And for a platform where 300 hours of video is uploaded every minute, manually tagging each video is ineffective.
2. Auto power off
Disabling autoplay will prevent the algorithm from skipping inappropriate content. For example, a few years ago typing “Elsa and Anna†into a YouTube search suggested relevant videos. However, after clicking on a few popular search results, related videos next to them were far from suitable for kids.
To turn off autoplay on YouTube, simply click the blue autoplay button in the upper right corner of the YouTube player. However, on Android and iOS, autoplay is hidden in the settings page. In the YouTube app, click on your profile photo in the upper right corner select “Settings” select “Autoplay” click “Autoplay” on the main page and turn it off.
3. Log out of your Google account
This method will take care of all legal but NSFW YouTube videos.
If for some reason you need to use the official YouTube app, it’s best to sign out of your Google account.
The logic behind this is pretty simple, when a creator uploads an NSFW video that contains any form of nudity, bad words, but is intended for educational use, they have to check the box to mark age 18+ consent. And if you are not signed in to your Google account, then even if your child accidentally touches the video icon, the clip will not play; instead, he will ask him to sign in.
Read: How to Whitelist Specific YouTube Channels on Adblocker
YouTube Kids Parental Controls
One way to overcome the limitation of restricted mode is to block all other apps and only use the YouTube Kids app. This is a special YouTube version designed for kids and featuring kid-friendly videos from Sesame Street, National Geographic Kids and PBS Kids, etc.
The app has several features that make it child-friendly, like a timer. You can set a timer for, say, 30 minutes before giving the phone to your child. When the time is up, the app will automatically lock itself.
The best thing about YouTube Kids (Android | iOS) is the built-in parental control options. For example, parents can turn off search on a child’s profile, which will only display videos selected by humans, not videos that are algorithmically selected by AI.
You can also manually whitelist the videos or channels your kids should see by going to Settings Child Profile and selecting only approved content. Then start adding videos and channels for your kids
Parents on the phone
Finally, consider setting parental controls to your entire phone rather than the YouTube app. The parental control app allows you to remotely control the screen time and monitor your child’s activities on the phone.
We’ve looked at some great parental control apps for Android and iOS in the past; however, if I need to pick one, I recommend Google’s Family Link.
To get started, simply install the Google Family Link app (Android, iOS) on your child’s devices and the Family Link app for parents (Android, iOS) on your device where you will be managing your account. Follow the onscreen instructions to set up the app for your child’s account and yours.
Once everything is set up correctly, you can set a daily time limit, such as one hour, which means your kids can only use the devices for one hour. You can also block apps like Play Store and Google Chrome. And best of all, check their whereabouts, all remotely using the Family Link parenting app.
Closing words
So these were several ways to set parental controls on YouTube.
After all, no app will work for you if you don’t raise your kids properly. From time to time at the dinner table, talk to your children about what they are watching on YouTube. While you’re at it, give them some tips on what you watched as a kid. Also remind them that if they come across any disturbing content on YouTube, they should talk to adults nearby.
Related: How to Block Specific YouTube Channels