YouTube has rolled out some expanded measures intended to help keep young users of the platform safe and includes updates to it’s in-stream “Take a Break” prompts as well as an expanded roll out of content restrictions for potentially harmful topics, among others.
The new measures include a new report on digital wellbeing, which was created in collaboration with adolescent health experts.
Take a Break and Bedtime reminders will now appear as a full-screen alert within YouTube Shorts as well as long-form videos, the company said, adding that the Take a Break feature will have a default trigger setting for every 60 minutes and that auto-play is set to off by default for teens and for supervised accounts.
Furthermore, YouTube is expanding its content safeguards to more regions as part of their continued efforts to protect vulnerable users.
“We worked with our Youth and Families Advisory Committee to develop safeguards by identifying categories of content that may be okay to watch as a single video, but could be problematic for some teens if viewed in repetition” the company said in their official post celebrating ‘Safer Internet Day’.
“This includes physical comparison content that idealizes certain physical features, fitness levels, or body weights over others or real-world social aggression content that shows non-contact fights or intimidation. We’re now limiting repeated recommendations of videos related to these topics for teens in the United States, and these updates will be coming soon to additional countries in 2024.”
“We actively work with mental health and child development experts, including our Youth and Families Advisory Committee, the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) and Asociación de Lucha contra la Bulimia y la Anorexia (ALUBA).”
YouTube has also released a new report, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO) and British Medical Journal (BMJ), that details and outlines principles for appropriate mental health content for teens and also provides guidance on communication strategies (Read their Child Safety Tools outline).
