In light of ongoing complaints by parents on the unsuitability of some of the content on YouTube, YouTube recently added parental controls, enabling parents to block kids from viewing many videos flagged as inappropriate for young teens.

Wild Web Woods uses well known fairy tales to teach children about online dangers, and how to use the web safely. It has been translated into 24 languages as concern grows that youngsters are at risk of ‘internet grooming’ by sexual predators when they go online.

The new parental controls will help parents block sexually explicit, violent and other dangerous content, such as a video promoting anorexia, which are very easily reached on YouTube.

The new Safety Mode does the following:

• limits content on videos containing nudity, pornography, narcotics, graphic violence, and news events containing graphic violence
• collapses all comments on videos automatically (you can choose to view comments, but comments with profanity will be filtered out)
• locks Safety Mode for all users, even if a user is logged out, so kids can’t turn off Safety Mode if they try to.

It is important to note that the Safety Mode doesn’t work in the private browsing mode.

Source: YouTube Adding Parental Controls, the early show – CBS news, February 10, 2010

Tags: YouTube, parental controls