YouTube has been forced into action after its Kids app has become inundated with disturbing videos masked as kid-friendly.
YouTube Kids was once a family friendly place for children to watch age-appropriate videos without parental consent. It has been successful for the most part but recently has seen a rise in disconcerting videos aimed at children.
Back in March, CafeMom published an article about the disturbing trend popping up on YouTube. People were publishing videos using popular characters like Peppa Pig and Thomas the Tank Engine to draw children’s attention. However, the videos turned out to be perverse with the characters engaging in violent and scary behavior for children to be watching.
The videos in question used the popular children’s characters and saw them being tortured or turned them into monsters. For example, one particular video saw poor Peppa Pig having all her teeth pulled out from a scary dentist.
Google Images
These videos are clearly designed to scare and horrify children and parents alike. However, in a small consolation to parents, most of these videos are not heavily laden with curse words and thankfully don’t use inappropriate sexual content.
This is why the videos have not been previously deemed or flagged as inappropriate, until now. YouTube announced last week that it was putting plans in place to prevent children from watching disturbing or inappropriate content.
Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of policy released a statement saying “Earlier this year, we updated our policies to make content featuring inappropriate use of family entertainment characters ineligible for monetisation. We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged. Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids. The YouTube team is made up of parents who are committed to improving our apps and getting this right.”
Google Images
YouTube claims it has been working on the age restriction policy change since before it was accused of infrastructural violence against minors, however, the Guardian believes they are acting as a direct result of the backlash they faced for letting the videos appear on the child-friendly app.
Cnet.com released some very useful tips for parents to help them protect their children from these random weird videos. They advise parents to turn off the search settings, set up a password to prevent children changing these settings themselves, report and block any questionable videos or perhaps switch to a different app like Nick Jr. or Netflix.
You can check out their full list of suggestions here: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-make-youtube-kids-safer-for-your-children/