YouTube has recently unveiled 'parent-supervised' accounts for children in the Middle East and North Africa; a feature that is activated directly within the app and gives families more control over their children's viewing experience. This change comes at a time when the government of the United Arab Emirates has recently raised the issue of limiting social media use for children under 15 years old.

These new accounts allow parents to choose from three different levels of accessible content. In the 'Explore' mode, children have access to more educational, artistic, and light entertainment content. In the 'Explore more' level, more videos including games and live streams are added. At the highest level, almost all of YouTube is accessible, except for 18+ content or inappropriate material for supervised users.

Alongside these options, additional control tools have been added. Parents can set a daily time limit for the Shorts section or even completely disable it. Features like 'break' and 'bedtime' reminders, disabling comments and content creation, as well as removing autoplay and personalized ads are also active in this version.

In fact, YouTube's new experience for children is now more of a guided environment rather than a completely free space; a place where parents play a key role in content selection and managing their children's online presence.

This new feature is released alongside teen accounts that have previously been active in the region. Those accounts focus more on transparency of online activity and allow parents to stay informed about their children's uploads and live streams.

Overall, it seems that YouTube is trying to align itself with the new wave of regulations and concerns regarding children's presence on social media in the region; a wave that is now being pursued more seriously in the UAE than before.

Source: Gulf Times