LONDON: YouTube has rolled out supervised children’s accounts across the Middle East and Turkiye as regulators and governments increase scrutiny of social media platforms’ impact on young people’s wellbeing.
The Alphabet‑owned platform on Wednesday unveiled a package of parental controls designed to give families more oversight while keeping content age-appropriate.
The move comes as authorities in the region press platforms to do more to prevent minors’ exposure to harmful material.
“We know that we play a hugely important part and a huge role in young people’s lives, and we do not take that responsibility lightly,” said Dr. Garth Graham, director and global head of healthcare and public health at Google and YouTube, during a roundtable attended by Arab News.
The new system offers three settings broadly aligned with international content ratings.
Parents can choose between “Explore,” which includes educational content, tutorials, arts and crafts and dance; “Explore More,” which adds gaming and live streams; and “Most of YouTube,” which gives access to almost all content on the platform except material restricted to adults or deemed inappropriate for supervised accounts.
“In recognition of the fact that each family and each child is different, supervised kids’ accounts put parents in the driver’s seat,” Graham said.
He added that the system “allows them to control the kind of content they want their children in this age group to see” through built‑in parental controls in the main YouTube app or on the web.
The platform is also introducing a Shorts feed timer, which allows parents to set daily time limits for how long children can scroll through the short-form video feed. YouTube said that the feature was an industry first.
In addition, YouTube is offering “Take a break” and “Bedtime reminders,” while disabling the ability to create content or write comments. Personalized ads are switched off, and autoplay is also disabled for supervised accounts.
“These are just the latest of our age-appropriate experiences in the region parents have had access (to),” said Graham, noting that the new rollout built on existing products such as YouTube Kids, teen accounts and Family Link, while localizing those tools for the region.
Dr. Garth Graham, director and global head of healthcare and public health at Google and YouTube. (YouTube/File)
YouTube has expanded parental features over the past decade, including account linking between parents and teens, email notifications about milestones, and tools to show insights into how young users engage with content.
It has also deployed measures to limit exposure to potentially problematic but not strictly prohibited material.
Still, the platform has become a focal point in a wider debate that has shifted from generic concerns about “online safety” to concrete regulatory proposals, including age limits and enforceable duties for major apps.
In recent weeks Turkiye and the UAE have introduced stricter rules for under‑15s that, in practice, amount to near‑total bans on social media access, while placing greater responsibility on platforms — and in the UAE also on parents — to enforce age checks and block harmful content.
“We always want to comply with the local rules,” said Graham, adding that the broader push reflected concerns for safety and wellbeing.
“Our broader focus (remains) always (on) rolling out tools and the infrastructure and scaffolding to help parents protect their children online.”
According to market research company Kantar, use of parental controls has surged by 60 percent over the past year, suggesting that parents are increasingly looking for ways to use those tools.
At the same time, searches for YouTube educational programs for children have doubled.
The company said that 95 percent of viewers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE agreed that YouTube had top content in education and learning, while 77 percent of parents with children younger than 15 in Turkiye said it was an important resource for accessing educational content for free.
Graham said that those figures underscored YouTube’s role in children’s education and creativity, and the need to balance access with safeguards.
“We really believe those benefits are worth preserving with thoughtful safeguards,” he said, adding that YouTube’s aim is to protect young people “in, not from, the digital world.”
He said that, much like the concerns of parents, the goal is to protect young people during their online experiences, and that the process required a shared effort.
“We know that the tech industry broadly plays a vital part in all of this, and we’ve been industry-leading in this field for some time now, but this space is constantly evolving, so we constantly evolve, and that’s why there’s really almost always more to do.”
Graham added that the foundation of a digital home was open dialogue between parents and children, saying that co-viewing could turn the screen into a shared family experience and help to develop digital skills.
“The second is agreeing on the rules together, sitting down as a family proactively rather than when times are tense,” he said.
“And the third is this idea of once you’ve agreed on the rules, use the tools to reinforce them, so as to minimize friction and moving away from constant back-and-forth.”
