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YouTube Kids Launches On Android and iOS
An anonymous reader writes As expected, YouTube today launched YouTube Kids for Android and iOS, described as a "family-friendly destination" and "the first Google product built from the ground up with little ones in mind." You can download the new app for free, available only in the U.S., directly from Google Play and Apple's App Store. The app's main selling point is that it only has content deemed appropriate for kids. In other words, the pitch to parents is very simple: This app will ensure that your kids can watch videos posted online without stumbling on clips you wouldn't want them to see.
This app will ensure that your kids can watch videos posted online without stumbling on clips you wouldn't want them to see.
Does this include ads?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Awesome. Is it going to stop showing my daughters weight loss ads before clips from Frozen and My Little Pony?
My 6 year old daughter does pretty good with YouTube, but there have been plenty of incidents like going from Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse to kids playing "Bobbie & Ricky" where Ricky has been kidnapped and tied up "because that's my kind of love!" which crosses the border a bit. I'll definitely be giving this app a shot.
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
You are correct. The article in The Guardian states: "The app will be free and funded by advertising, although YouTube says it will be carefully screening ads to ensure they are appropriate for children." If there were no ads, then there would probably be no partner or claimed videos. This would have cut out a lot of YouTube.
How about implementing parental controls on Android instead? I can't give my kid an Android phone or tablet, because it's not possible to disable Youtube on it, and Youtube is full of garbage.
Both my kids use YouTube and I do try to monitor what they watch. This will certainly ease my mind regarding what they will be linked to from an original video and also only list child-friendly content.
to grow up on media consumption devices in their hands. That's gonna be some socially inept generations coming up.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
As with so many "kid friendly" things, I have to wonder what the threshold is for varying types of content and who decides it's appropriate.
If it's like anything else, what they block and, more importantly, what they show is probably motivated more by religiousness and/or political correctness than by an honest assessment of what's appropriate for kids. I'm sure they'll block plenty of things that are just fine for kids while exposing them to all kinds of stuff they probably shouldn't be exposed to. But I'm sure the sucker moms... sorry, soccer moms who are too busy driving around with a latte in one hand and a makeup brush in the other will be happy to have yet another consumer device to plug their kid into so they don't have to be bothered to actually be a parent.
Is the plan to replace YouTube for Education with this? YTE never quite worked right, and the filtering YT offers itself blocks content randomly, almost laughable sometimes at what it deems objectionable.
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I'd suggest looking into user profiles, which you can use for your kids and hand select the apps you want them to be able to use (like YouTube Kids: YES, YouTube: NO). I'm guessing you'd want Chrome/Browser disabled also. If you think Youtube is full of garbage, you should check out this whole internet thing. I think this only works for Android Tablets, though (as of 4.2 I think). They added user accounts for 5.0 for phone, but not the limited profiles part.
There are many free apps that do that kind of thing.
Also if you have a non-nexus Samsung, or a non-nexus LG device, that are at least one year old, you have that functionality that is already baked into their customized ROM. The only thing is that LG doesn't call their functionality parental control, they call it 'Guest mode' instead which is actually really good because the way it's triggered, through a different unlock pattern or a different unlock pin, your guest has actually no idea he's using 'Guest mode' (aside from the missing functionality you chose to leave out).
So 'Guest mode' also works great for girlfriends/boyfriends, curious passengers borrowing your phone, and overzealous cops, not just kids. It all depends on the way you choose to configure it.
this one
Won't somebody think of the chil... oh wait.
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While I agree that native parental controls would be great, and as a parent I was also surprised they weren't there, there are apps that you can use to lock down devices quite easily to limit what your kids can access.
Kids Place is a good one:
https://play.google.com/store/...
The bigger problem is no end of "free" games stuffed full of ads that kids accidentally click all the time. IMO Google needs a policy that says if you are marketing to kids under a certain age you may not have certain types of ads (or any ads) in your app. As a parent, I'll gladly give you a couple of bucks to have a "safe" app for my child to use.
And so the countdown to a headline here that contains both the terms "YouTube Kids" and "4chan" begins.
It'll be a short one.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
Or perhaps an ability to limit the amount of time.
My kid will watch videos on Minecraft ALL DAY LONG if I would let him. Not even play the darn game himself, he'd rather just watch others play the game. I've had to disable youtube from the xbox, remove internet from the blueray player all together, and limit his time on the computer, because thats ALL he wanted to do. And the videos always contained a lot of profanity as well. Not so much that I minded him watching 1 video, but hours of profane youtube videos of minecraft. I had enough..
Never mind parental controls, how about user controls over app permissions? (ie. putting the user and their privacy/security first.)
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The parent can't even set their own PIN code. For security they pick four random numbers that change every time. Then they just ask you to punch in the numerals for something like "one eight seven four" and you put in "1874". Unless your kid is really young or really dumb, there's no point.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I wonder how long it will be before the battle begins as to what is "kid friendly" on this service? I foresee some people are going to start complaining about the most benign things as "appropriate" is highly variable dependent on the individual/culture.. Muslims may complain about a clip showing cooking with pork, Christians will probably whine if some clip shows a woman wearing "traditional" Muslim clothing. Even if limiting the issue to a relatively small region you invariably hit issues, in a single city some people would probably object to a you-tube clip of kids in bathing suits on a beach claiming that its going to give some sickos ideas while at the same time blithely ignoring the same images in a store circular/catalog.
Will My Little Pony be available on YouTube Kids, or will it continue to just be for adults?
I come here for the love
On iOS, this app is labeled for "kids 5 and under". ... so after 5 it's just rickrolling, goatse and downhill from there?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Let me grab some popcorn so I can watch all the people who don't have kids tell the rest of us parents how we should be doing it. Haha
Anyway, we don't have TV in our house so I let my kid watch a bit of Youtube now and then. She gets maybe two hours a week, maybe more. The frustrating thing has always been the "Youtube Wormhole" where any number of various suggested videos will pop up, and clicking through them can lead to you some odd places, as others have mentioned. It will be nice to know that there is at least SOME sort of "quality control" going on to help keep my kid going through the wormhole.
As for ads, it's all about teaching your kid what they are from an early age. My kid hates ads almost as much as I do and hits that "skip ad" button with surgical precision when it comes up. It sucks that she's growing up in the advertising age but without TV, and living in a pretty rural area, I think the occasional Youtube ad won't completely destroy her ability to resist consumerist urges.
Given what they are teaching in public schools these days, I'm rather curious as to their definition of "family-friendly destination".
What?
That's been part of Android for years. Here is one article describing what needs to be done.
My profile is already quite "poluted" with kids stuff...my main gripe about youtube are the ads, my kid already knows how to bypass them. My kindgmon for a youtube app that does not show ads!... In my Macs filters cut them out, however not as pratical for the kid as the iPad.
An idea that has already been there for a while, and it is available on both Goole Play and the App Store. It is called "Totstube Free":
Apple App Store:
https://appsto.re/us/SRbN4.i
Google Play:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wodocorp.totstubefree
YouTube videos also tend to be a lot shorter than segments of children's broadcast television. Compare the 11-minute segments of an animated TV series for children with the 1- to 4-minute YouTube videos. This makes the requirements described in the "Commercial Time Limitations" section more practical to fulfill for broadcast television than for YouTube. For example, a 15-second commercial might be shown before a 45-second video, which would exceed the FCC's 1 to 4 ratio for weekdays, let alone the 1 to 4.7 ratio for weekends. Would you prefer to have the YouTube Kids app just block viewing of partner or claimed videos when the app has displayed too many partner or claimed videos within a 60-minute period? That'd feel like the forced waiting in Candy Crush Saga.