User:Charles Wills/YouTube Kids

Safety Improvements
Youtube kids was created to be a safe haven for young minds. It still required a bit of improvement.The company has worked diligently to add features to improve the safety of the environment for children. In 2015, the company developers created the Youtube kids app for multiple platforms. Namely Android and IOS. This came as a bit of relief to parents as it felt like a surefire safe environment to give their kids while on the go, Initially, the app was the primary means of accessing the kids version of Youtube. Later on, the development team at google (which owns youtube) developed apps for smart tv's as well as a web browser version giving kids and parents tons of safe options. To promote this safety, Youtube also added app access to certain cable providers set top boxes. This app is essentially the same as the Smart Tv app. As with most google apps across several platforms, once you sign into your profile your information is brought right along with you using profile management. This is also a new safety feature added to the platform. Having child specific profile alleviates the possibility of 2 or more children of different age groups from sharing the same browsing history. Having this capability keeps the recommended and history algorithms from giving the wrong age rated content to the wrong age. It also keeps kids from having to search endlessly for content and stumbling upon something some parents may deem inappropriate.

On top of developing new features to keep children safe and searching in the right pool of content, youtube has employed a human curator system. They have employees who approve and sort out content for the Youtube kids platform specifically. This is a filter with a human eye and a child's safety and healthy development in mind. It allows the parents to disable the search feature and only display recommended content based on the profile age and browse history. While this has had some bias flaws during it's existence, it is far better system than using A.I. and tags in descriptions. All that being said, Youtube kids still has flaws. Several years worth of complaint and bad reviews have been compiled since it's birth in 2015. Many parents have and still complain of unfiltered content sleeping through the safety gate. Many reviewers believe they should be able to leave their child alone with anything on youtube kids and not have to fear they will see something damaging to their emotional or psychological health. You tube has tried to facilitate this but nothing is ever made to be perfect. The website common sense media is flooded with bad reviews and complaints and can give the appearance that the app and platform is more hurtful than helpful. However, in the age of digital entertainment on online viewership, it is one tool parent can use to help battle the ills of the digital domain of which our future generations will surely become a part of.