Investing in teen digital well-being on YouTube
Teens come to YouTube to learn, explore their passions, and express themselves. We recognize our responsibility to ensure that the time they spend on the platform is well-used. That’s why our teen products and features are guided by our Youth and Family Advisory Board , a group of experts specializing in child development, digital media, mental health, and online learning.
Today, we’d like to share with you some updated features, inspired directly by their experiences:
Additional safeguards on teen video viewing order: Last year, we released updates based on research findings on teen developmental stages and the impact of online content on their well-being. In collaboration with our Youth and Families Advisory Committee , we developed safeguards by identifying video categories that are harmless for a single viewing but could be problematic for some teens if viewed repeatedly. We also developed ways to break up teen viewing of these videos globally to prevent repeated viewing. These controls initially applied to content depicting social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and assault, and to content comparing ideal physical attributes or body types.
We are now expanding the scope to include a wider range of topics that may cause problems when viewed repeatedly by some teens, including:
- Unrealistic or poor financial advice exploits teens who may have low levels of financial literacy. This includes content that, for example, features “get rich quick” schemes, suggests viewers buy a product that teaches them how to become rich, or buy lottery tickets to become even richer.
- Content that depicts misdemeanors and negative behaviors, such as cheating on a test, lying for personal gain, or engaging in pranks and public antics that negatively impact others, such as insulting customers in a store while pretending to work there.
- Content that portrays teens as mean or malicious or encourages them to make fun of others, such as targeting people in public who don’t want to interact with people or making fun of others because they are poor.
We continue to enforce our Community Guidelines to remove content and prevent minors from viewing videos that violate our policies, including those related to scams , child safety , harassment , and dangerous pranks .
Teenagers are developing their identities and moral principles while learning how to navigate situations in their lives. These expanded controls allow them to explore the digital world in a way that aligns with their developmental stage.
Bedtime and Break Reminders: Two full-screen reminders now appear across short and long videos to help teens better manage their viewing time. They’re on by default for users under 18.
- The break reminder can be set at a specific frequency as a reminder to stop watching videos, with a default setting for teen accounts to play every 60 minutes.
- Bedtime reminders are triggered at specific times to encourage viewers to stop watching videos and go to bed. Our latest updates:
- A new reminder alerts teens when their bedtime is 30 minutes away.
- The default bedtime for teens is 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Teens can adjust their bedtime start time, but the suggested end time will be 8 hours later.
YouTube’s Supervised Teen Experience: More families are using the voluntary supervision experience we launched last year. This experience gives parents and teens the ability to link accounts in the YouTube Family Center, providing parents with a comprehensive view of their teen’s channel activity, including uploads, comments, subscriptions, and more. Linked accounts can also receive email notifications about channel activity and access tips and resources created with external experts to support parent-teen conversations about responsible content creation. This update expands on our existing Supervised Teen experience.
All of these developments build on a suite of existing features on YouTube to protect younger users and provide parental controls, from the launch of YouTube Kids to dedicated protections for digital safety and well-being. Our Youth Principles, which prioritize safety, well-being, privacy, and mental health, underpin all of these ongoing activities and developments.
Many of us at YouTube are parents, and we understand the choices families face when it comes to ensuring their loved ones’ well-being and setting digital ground rules. Our goal is to empower parents with the tools they need to personalize their children’s YouTube experience and foster confident and safe exploration of their interests. We will continue to invest and expand on this vital work.