Official Google Australia Blog: February 2021

A new choice for parents of tweens and teens on YouTube

Thursday, February 25, 2021

“We’ve worked closely with YouTube on the complexities of redesigning their global platform to help ensure that the content children consume is diverse, high quality and age-appropriate. Getting this right is challenging – and requires ongoing discussions with global experts. A global platform will always need to keep innovating in response to emerging challenges, so it’s great to see that YouTube has processes in place to ensure that top notch expertise can guide its evolution.” - Prof Amanda Third, Young and Resilient Research Center Western Sydney University

This generation of tweens and teens has grown up online, and it’s where they go to learn, laugh, and connect. Every family has a different approach to how they use technology, access the internet and set digital ground rules. Over the years, we’ve made investments to protect families and kids on YouTube, such as launching a dedicated kids app, better protecting their privacy, restricting features and improving age restrictions. Today, we are announcing a new choice for parents who have decided their tweens and teens are ready to explore YouTube with a supervised account.

Supervised experiences on YouTube From our earliest days, YouTube has been a platform for people over 13, and we’ve always recommended that parents co-watch with their kids if they choose to watch YouTube. In 2015, we created YouTube Kids, a safer destination for kids to explore their interests while providing parental controls. But since then, we’ve heard from parents and older children that tweens and teens have different needs, which weren’t being fully met by our products. As children grow up, they have insatiable curiosity and need to gain independence and find new ways to learn, create, and belong. Over the last year, we've worked with parents and experts across the globe in areas related to child safety, child development, and digital literacy to develop a solution for parents of tweens and teens. In the coming months, we’ll launch a new experience in beta for parents to allow their children to access YouTube through a supervised Google Account. This supervised experience will come with content settings and limited features. We’ll start with an early beta for families with kids under the age of consent to test and provide feedback, as we continue to expand and improve the experience.

Giving parents content options on YouTube We know that every parent has a different parenting style and that every child is unique and reaches different developmental stages at different times. That’s why we’ll give parents the ability to choose from 3 different content settings on YouTube.

Explore: For children ready to move on from YouTube Kids and explore content on YouTube, this setting will feature a broad range of videos generally suitable for viewers ages 9+, including vlogs, tutorials, gaming videos, music clips, news, educational content and more.
Explore More: With content generally suitable for viewers ages 13+, this setting will include an even larger set of videos, and also live streams in the same categories as “Explore.”
Most of YouTube: This setting will contain almost all videos on YouTube, except for age-restricted content, and it includes sensitive topics that may only be appropriate for older teens.

This option was designed for parents who think their children are ready to explore the vast universe of YouTube videos. We will use a mix of user input, machine learning and human review to determine which videos are included. We know that our systems will make mistakes and will continue to evolve over time. We recommend parents continue to be involved in guiding and supporting their child’s experience on YouTube. To help parents get started, we’ve developed a guide in partnership with National PTA, Parent Zone and Be Internet Awesome. We’ll also launch an ongoing campaign that features creators discussing themes like bullying and harassment, misinformation, digital well-being and more.

New features for families We understand the importance of striking a balance between empowering tweens and teens to more safely gain independence, while offering parents ways to set controls. In addition to choosing the content setting, parents will be able to manage watch and search history from within their child's account settings. Parents can also use other controls offered by Google’s Family Link, including screen timers. We’ll continue adding new parental controls over time, such as blocking content. When a parent grants access to YouTube, their child’s experience will feel much like regular YouTube, but certain features will be disabled to protect younger audiences. For example, we won't serve personalised ads or ads in certain categories. At launch, we'll also disable in-app purchases, as well as creation and comments features. Since self-expression and community are integral parts of YouTube and children's development, over time we'll work with parents and experts to add some of these features through an age-appropriate and parent controlled approach.

Investing in YouTube Kids We’re building this new supervised experience for parents who think their older kids are ready to use YouTube, but we still recommend YouTube Kids for younger kids to watch independently and have a more contained viewing experience. With availability in over 80 countries, now over 35 million viewers use YouTube Kids every week. We’ll continue expanding product availability, adding new features, and offering several new parental tools, such as a highly-requested option for parents to select specific videos and channels from the main YouTube platform that they’d like their child to explore on YouTube Kids.

We know that we have a long journey ahead of us as we design this experience for parents of tweens and teens. Over the long term, we hope this will provide a safer environment for older children to explore their interests, learn new skills, connect with communities that share their passions, while giving parents more ways to support their kids' online experience.

Posted by James Beser, Director of Product Management, Kids and Family

Wear a mask, wash your hands, don’t reuse your password!

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Parents have always been concerned for the digital safety of their families, and with online learning becoming the main mode of school for many, this might be even more of a concern. So we worked with our Trust and Safety Research team to survey parents all over Asia-Pacific, including here in Australia, and found that parents with children attending school online were more concerned about online safety than those whose children attended school in-person. As we moved to home working and learning, and children continued their education through digital means, 47% of Aussie parents expressed increased concern about online safety for their children. But interestingly, more than a third of parents interviewed said they had never spoken to their children about online safety, and only half of those interviewed said they were currently using online family safety features. As kids of different ages use the internet in very different ways, instilling safe habits can be a challenge. So today, on Safer Internet Day, here are some tips to address the top three parental concerns when it comes to keeping our children safe online.
1. Protect their digital identities. The privacy and security of their children’s information was the top concern of parents we surveyed across all regions. Parents cited concerns around scams or hacking of their child’s accounts. Here are some simple ways to safeguard your kids’ information:

Teach your children how to choose strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed. Avoid simple passwords that use names, birthdates, or even favourite cartoon characters.
It is also useful to stick to platforms that have a strong reputation for user safety. For instance, using an email service like Gmail comes with built-in safety filters to detect phishing emails, blocking 99.9% of phishing attacks from ever reaching your inbox.

2. Know who they talk to. Social isolation is a difficult outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic, and our children connect with their friends online, whether through messaging apps or voice chat while playing games. It is important for parents to be aware that these channels can also be used by ill-intentioned strangers to reach out to our children. Just as in real life, it is important to be aware of who our children talk to online.

Try to talk to your kids about the games they play or the videos they watch, and also the people they play with online. I always remind my son to come to me immediately if he faces any situation online that makes him feel uncomfortable. More than 70% of parents in Asia-Pacific were not very confident that their children would come to them if they encountered unsafe situations online. Considering more than a third of the parents we interviewed had never spoken to their children about online safety we need to work hard to reassure our children that we are here to guide and protect them.
When assessing if a game is suitable for your child, it is important to check not only the content of the game, but also whether the app allows online communications with others. Some multiplayer games allow only a few options for social interaction, like a thumbs up rather than a text chat. This reduces risks of unwanted social interactions by quite a lot.

3. Offer appropriate content at the appropriate age. The fear of children encountering inappropriate content has long been among the top concerns of parents in surveys. There are family safety features that parents can use to help guard their children from content that may not be suitable for their age. However, we learned that only 50% of Aussie parents we surveyed are using these features. Here are some features that you can start using today:

Turning on SafeSearch on Google helps filter out explicit content in Google’s search results for all searches, including images, videos and websites. SafeSearch is designed to help block explicit results like pornography from Google search results.
Manage your child’s device by creating a Google account for your child and using Family Link. This allows you to add filters on Google Search, block websites or only give access to the ones you allow or track the location of your child if they have their own device.
Many parental controls are available on YouTube Kids. You are able to limit screen time, only show videos that you approve or select suitable content based on the age of your child.

Some other time-tested tips include allowing children to use the internet only in common areas in the home such as the living room. But the tough part is leading by example!
At the end of the day, the core of parenting lies in the relationships we build with our children. They require our guidance on the internet as much as they do in the real world. Let’s work together to make the internet a safe place for our children to learn, create and explore.
Posted by Samantha Yorke, Online Safety Lead, Government Affairs and Public Policy

Australia Blog

A new choice for parents of tweens and teens on YouTube

Wear a mask, wash your hands, don’t reuse your password!

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