The YouTube comments section, historically, has had a bad reputation, but a change could prevent children from falling into the comment cesspool. In an email to parents who supervise a child’s account, the company announced the introduction of a “read-only” comments option to their child’s supervised YouTube experience.
The feature will roll out in the “coming weeks,” YouTube says.
The change is one of the biggest adjustments to YouTube’s parental control features since the introduction of greater protections for minors in 2021 following increased pressure from lawmakers.
Image credits: YouTube Previously, comments were completely disabled, which meant that both reading and commenting were unavailable to children. However, YouTube said at the time that it would work with parents and experts to add comments through an age-appropriate approach for older children in the future.
The new addition applies to two of the three content settings available to parents who want to set up a friendlier YouTube experience for their kids: “Explore More” and “Most of YouTube.”
The former allows kids to explore videos with content ratings for viewers ages 13 and up, while “Most YouTube” gives older kids access to most of YouTube’s content, except for videos that are specifically age restricted only for adults.
By default, children will be able to read, but not write, comments in both content settings modes. Live chat will also be disabled.
Meanwhile, parents who want to turn off comments entirely can switch their kids to the “Explore” setting, aimed at viewers ages 9 and up. (This option is usually the first step towards the main YouTube experience, after using the dedicated YouTube Kids app as a child.)
Parents can view and change their children’s settings from the parent settings on YouTube or through Google family link Parental control app, YouTube notes. They can also view their child’s history on the child’s device in the section My activity setting.
The company adds that the YouTube settings that parents select for their children will not apply when the child is not using the YouTube site or app directly, such as when watching embedded YouTube content on a third-party site, for example.
Congress has been pressuring tech companies for years to do more to protect children from the negative impacts of their services, but has dragged its feet in terms of codifying their demands into new laws. More recently, however, the Child Online Safety Act has gained traction, requiring stronger parental controls from platform makers. The bill has bipartisan support, just like COPPA 2.0 (Children and Adolescents Online Protection Act), which focuses on greater data protection, privacy and the prohibition of advertising aimed at children and adolescents.
YouTube is getting ahead of any required changes to its parental control platform by incorporating new protections by default.
After launching parental controls in 2021, YouTube launched a series of product updates to make YouTube safer for teens in November 2023. This included limits on repeat viewing of some topics, as well as renewed reminders to “take a break” and “time to sleep.” among other things.
While the email detailed the changes to parents, the company has not made a public announcement. on your blog about read-only comments so far. Requests for comment have not been returned.
