YouTube is inviting parents to moderate the on-platform activity of their children. The video site has added a Family Center to its mobile app to serve parents who wish to provide a “supervised experience” for teenage users.
The Family Center will let parents link their accounts with those of their children. Once they do, they’ll be able to keep track of their kids’ uploads, subscriptions, comments, and other activities.
YouTube’s supervised experience initially debuted as a check for pre-teen users, but YouTube is now bringing teens into the equation as well. Over the past few years, platform-wide policies have targeted video categories that harm the mental health of teenagers. Eating disorder videos — and the “imitable behaviors” therein — are a frequent target of those initiatives.
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The new Family Center includes some contributions from some of the organizations that have informed YouTube’s approach to youth mental health. A Common Sense Media affiliate has provided a guide to responsible creation that parents can use to open up conversations with their creator children.
Parental concerns about the impact of social media on youth mental health have led to scrutiny from regulators and, in some cases, lawsuits from the families of children whose deaths have been linked to dangerous and harmful content. The Family Center gives parents a chance to become part of the solution to that problem, so long as their children are willing to meaningfully engage with the tools YouTube has developed. Similar partnerships have launched on platforms like TikTok as well.
Of course, getting teenagers to see eye-to-eye with their parents is easier said than done. Naysayers will argue that YouTube’s Family Center is easily circumvented by children who hide their browsing and publishing activity from their parents. But identifying the issues that plague young internet users and outlining possible solutions are two important steps toward a safer social media landscape. YouTube has often been used as an amplifier for important mental health discussions. Now the platform is hoping to bring parents into the conversation, too.
