Do you know what a YouTube content filter is and how it can protect your online safety and your children as well? The YouTube content filter is designed to protect you from any offensive videos and videos that are not age-appropriate. The content filter can work to a degree but you will still have a lot of videos that are going to slip through the cracks no matter what you do.
Most of the videos do not ask for any type of age verification and this makes it very easy for children and teens to get into videos that are inappropriate. While YouTube does try to control the videos that are posted on the site, they aren’t always able to remove all of the offensive and inappropriate ones. Extreme violence along with videos of a pornographic nature are removed but there are still a lot of videos that squeak by. Users do have the option to flag a video and have it reported if it is obscene and is really breaking the rules and policies laid forth by YouTube.
While there are content filters, they aren’t really all that effective in protecting our children. Run a search term for innocent words and you will see just how many inappropriate videos arise. This makes it very challenging for parents to trust that their children won’t see obscene things and it also makes it frustrating to even allow your kids to use the website.
If the videos are very pornographic in nature or they are inappropriate for minors, YouTube does have a content filter and a message will pull up saying you need to be at least 18 years of age to view the video. Then you need to sign up for an account with YouTube in order to watch the video. While this works to an extent, any smart kid will be able to still view the video and claim they are age-appropriate and this does happen a lot.
YouTube does have a staff that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to scan videos and make sure they are not in violation of the content rules. This can help parents feel a little better that YouTube is just as concerned as you are about content and safety.
To enable the content filter on YouTube you will need to sign into your account and take it to a safety mode. What the safety mode will do is replace all the inappropriate language with stars and it will hide comments for videos. The YouTube content filter does it’s best and it still isn’t going to get rid of everything, but it can help to cut down on some of the stuff that is out there.
Once you are on the website, scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you will see a list of terms and you need to click on the one that says “safety”. Here you will be directed to a page where you can change your settings. You need to click “ON” or “OFF” in order to save your safety settings (note, to do this you must be signed into your account). Once you click it you must click save in order for the safety filter to take effect.
This can help to protect your kids as much as possible but you can also do more by changing your internet security settings. You can easily lock a Safety Mode on your internet browser which will block specific content from your computer, keeping your kids safe from all the unwanted content that can be found on YouTube.