8 Tips How To Make YouTube safe for your child

How To Make YouTube safe for your child

Nowadays, the Internet is another window to the world for our children. YouTube, in many homes, has permanently replaced television and thus, has become one of the dominant media, shaping our children in some way. It is worth ensuring that the youngest users of tablets, smartphones, computers and TVs watch content adapted to their age on YouTube.

Of course, the easiest solution would be to block access to the entire site from browsers or devices where children use the internet. However, given the popularity of YouTube and the mass of positive and good content that is most suitable for our children, this way of protecting the youngest will certainly not work in the long run. New technologies surround us from all sides and children are learning faster how to use tablets and computers. Therefore, it is worth ensuring that the devices are adapted to children. It still cannot be said that YouTube is a service that we can configure one hundred percent under the youngest. However, there are several options and tools that you may not know about that will definitely help you tailor the displayed videos to small users.

Table of Contents

1. Watch and talk

It is clear that sooner or later, the child’s curiosity will prevail. In my time, in the absence of parents, people used forbidden video cassettes. Today, children have much easier access to violence or pornography. The parent should, especially, carefully watch his child and talk to him about what is allowed and what is not allowed to be seen at a given age. Even the most sophisticated computer and browser security will not help if we do not pay attention to the content that the child is viewing on his computer or tablet. I am not talking here of course about permanent surveillance. It’s good to keep an eye on your child’s devices, or spend more time showing him the positive content he can find on YouTube.

2. Create your own playlists

If you choose DVD movies with your child that may be in his home collection, why not create similar collections on YouTube? Creating a ready playlist and placing a link to it in the visible tab will definitely be a pleasant surprise for the curious toddler. In the playlist it is worth including movies with the child’s favorite heroes and also add to it content that will positively stimulate the development and curiosity of the child. YouTube also has many ready playlists, especially music ones. By entering the chosen phrase, just select the “playlist” in the “Filters” tab, which you will find just above the first search results.

3. Not just “big” YouTube

The most temptation for our child is where content is not filtered in any way. Instead of using the YouTube homepage, where there are often links to videos for a more mature viewer, it is worth showing the youngest other pages that aggregate content relevant to them. Youtube Kids can be the best foreign example of a similar service .

When looking for other websites of this type, beware of pirate streaming portals, which in return for expensive text messages, offer access to content to which the site creators have no right.

4. Hide comments

Make YouTube safe for your child — Hide YouTube Comments

YouTube is not just videos, but also a community. Unfortunately, this one can’t always behave. There is no shortage of Internet trolls and haters on YouTube. Comments under the movies are often even more dangerous for kids than the video materials themselves. To spare children profanity, hatred and lies, we can install the Chrome browser plugin, which has the name of Hide YouTube Comments . You will find it HERE .

5. Turn on Safe Mode/Restriction Mode

Probably few of you were looking at the bar at the bottom of the YouTube homepage. Just above the “footer“, you will find several buttons such as: language, country or history. A switch was placed between them, enabling “safe mode“. It allows you to hide videos that may contain inappropriate content that has been reported by users. Of course, no filter is 100% effective, but enabling this mode can help protect your child from inappropriate content.

For How to Activate Restriction Mode

Click on your Profile icon and scroll till the end.

Click the highlighted option and Activate Restriction Mode.

YouTube safe for your child — Activate Restriction Mode

6. Turn off specific channels

If you want to block specific YouTube channels that you think are not suitable for children, once again you will need a plug-in dedicated to the Chrome browser. The plugin is called Video Blocker and you will find it at THIS link. There is also a version for Firefox . After installing the plugin, just hover over the selected movie, press the right mouse button and then select the “Block videos from this channel” option. From now on, content from a channel that is not entirely suitable for toddlers will no longer be displayed on YouTube. If you would like to change this, in the case of Chrome browser, just go to Settings and there, from the “extensions” tab, remove the selected channel from the blocked list.

7. Block ads

My penultimate advice is the most moral when it comes to protecting our children from inappropriate content, but blocking ads is not entirely fair to the creators of the content we are watching. Ads appearing on YouTube are both movies and banners. While the first ones also bomb our children from TV sets and we rather don’t come across content that will have a particularly negative impact on children (not counting, of course, consumer brainwashing …), advertising banners are a different kind of problem. By clicking on the banner that appears under the film, the child can move to other sites, from which it is not difficult, even by accident, to get to places that are not necessarily suitable for children.

In such cases, it’s definitely worth thinking about the AdBlock plugin, a dedicated browser used by the child. Remember, however, that advertising is the main source of income for online creators, so when you use YouTube yourself, think about the empty portfolios of the creators of the content you are watching.

8. Use the mobile application

The last piece of advice is dedicated to tablet users, which have now become one of our children’s favorite toys.There are inbuilt app offers by companies.You just have to turn on Child mode in Mobile/tablet device rest of the work will be done by child mode.