The aim is to give parents peace of mind when it comes to their children browsing and watching videos on YouTube.
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YouTube has launched its family friendly video app YouTube Kids in Ireland, with content from Irish creators alongside established favourites such as Peppa Pig and The Magic Roundabout.
The app is available on Android and iOS and serves up content that’s suitable for kids of all ages. Parents will have the option to disable the search function allowing children only to access videos recommended on the homepage. Yes, this means that content will be filtered and aimed specifically at children, so all that weird and dark places of YouTube will most likely not find their way onto the kids version of the video streaming platform (phew).
Available on iOS and Android, YouTube Kids distils Google’s enormous online video library to a set of child-friendly channels curated by YouTube itself, as well as its content partners like Treehouse, CBC, TVO and National Geographic.
The app has been downloaded more than 10 million times in the USA, and although it has largely been well received, there has been concerns in the past around the type of ads and videos the service throws up.
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Parents can also adjust sound settings and set up a custom passcode and the app is refined with features like uploading and sharing removed. However with the numerous safeguards it is a mostly guaranteed safe environment, especially compared to the native YouTube application. Today, the team is expanding YouTube Kids into two new countries – Australia and Canada – and adding in lots of country-specific programming like Charli’s Crafty Kitchen and Wild Kratts, too.
