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In context: YouTube has over 2.7 billion monthly users, and a significant portion of its global audience consists of teenagers and even younger viewers. Alphabet's video platform has had an unprecedented social impact and influence but is frequently criticized for its role in promoting misinformation, enabling copyright violations, and compromising children's safety.
YouTube is no safe haven for sensitive subjects or minors, and the company is well aware of it. The video-sharing platform has previously been fined for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Now, Alphabet is aiming to provide a higher level of "mutual" control over how teens express themselves online.
YouTube recently introduced a new, "collaborative" approach to teen supervision, allowing parents to have a closer look at what their children are doing on the platform. According to the company, this new supervised experience builds on its previous work with pre-teen supervision and represents the first iteration of a feature that will likely evolve and improve over time.
Parents and teens will be able to link their accounts through the new Family Center hub. From this central control hub, parents will receive "shared insights" into their children's activity on the platform, including stats on video uploads, subscriptions, and comments.
The new feature will also provide "proactive" email notifications about key events, such as video uploads or live streams. These notifications will be shared between parents and teens, with both parties having mutual control over the feature, YouTube states. This setup is intended to help teens grow as informed and responsible netizens, although they can choose to disable the feature entirely and exclude their parents from their YouTube activities.
YouTube noted that its new supervision capabilities are being developed with input from independent experts in child development and learning. In line with its youth principles, the company aims to offer a new experience that balances respect for teens' autonomy with parents' concerns about online safety.
Ellen Selkie, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, emphasizes that teens need a (cyber) space to make their own choices and explore their identity and values. Trusted adults can provide guidance when necessary. Selkie advocates for a "trust, but verify" approach when discussing online activities with parents and teens, and YouTube's new supervised experience appears to support this mutual growth strategy.