I’m really confused about this whole YouTube situation. From what I understand, kids under a certain age won’t be allowed to have their own accounts anymore. But they can still watch videos without being logged in. Here’s what doesn’t make sense to me - right now my kid has an account that I set up with restricted mode turned on and no ads showing up. If she has to watch without an account, doesn’t that mean she’ll see everything including inappropriate content and all those random advertisements? I thought this was supposed to make things safer for children but it seems like it’s doing the opposite. Can someone explain how removing these safety features is actually better? I’m genuinely trying to understand the logic here because as a parent this feels backwards to me.
honestly the whole thing seems like youtube just covering their legal bases rather than actually caring about safety. they’re probably more worried about getting fined than protecting kids. my guess is they figure pushing everyone to youtube kids solves the problem but like… good luck getting teens to use that lol
This policy change basically dumps everything back on parents instead of YouTube’s automated systems - huge protection gap. YouTube’s pulling features that actually worked pretty well because they can’t guarantee 100% compliance with child privacy laws when kids have accounts. Their solution? Parents will either move kids to YouTube Kids or actively supervise everything. Yeah, right. Most kids will just browse without accounts and hit way worse content than they would’ve seen with restricted mode on. YouTube’s picking legal cover over safety features that were already working.
You’re absolutely right - this new policy is a mess. YouTube’s trying to follow COPPA rules by restricting kid accounts, but they’re actually making things worse. When they remove these accounts, kids can’t use restricted mode anymore, which leaves them wide open to sketchy content and ads. Sure, YouTube says to use YouTube Kids instead, but most parents don’t even know that’s an option. So now it’s all on parents to monitor everything, which doesn’t really make kids any safer.