YouTube has finally launched its child-friendly app outside of the United States and extended its reach in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
The app, called YouTube Kids, was first launched in the United States back in February to provide a safer environment for children when watching videos online.
According to The Telegraph, the app is designed for three to eight-year-old kids, who might stumble upon videos that contain images or scenes not suitable for their age. The newly launched app will instead offer only TV shows for children, educational videos, and nursery rhymes.
The app, which can be downloaded for free for Apple and Android devices, has several features that should help parents monitor what their kids see online. They include voice search, restricted search settings, a timer parents can set to limit usage, and the absence of a comments section.
Since the U.S. launch, the app has been received well with over 10 million downloads. Despite that, it was still criticized by different parental groups because inappropriate content can somehow still slip through.
According to Digital Trends, complaints include failure to block those videos and also the showing of ads that feature alcohol and sexual content.
To address the many complaints made by different consumer groups, YouTube has rolled out updates to provide a much safer viewing environment for kids.
The news outlet reported that YouTube has provided more well-defined guidelines for parental controls and blocking inappropriate content efficiently.
Even though the app is considered child-friendly, the search function does not guarantee that children won't stumble upon content unsuitable for them while browsing. The solution for this issue is an app feature that lets parents disable the search functions and only allow viewing of the videos that appear on the home screen.
In a YouTube Kids Parental Guide found in Google's help section, it was mentioned that YouTube will continue with its efforts in making the app much safer.
However, YouTube also emphasized that there's no perfect algorithm, and kids can still find content parents don't want them to see. The company is urging parents to flag any inappropriate videos to help developers improve the app.
