Just over two months ago, YouTube introduced an app for kids called YouTube Kids in order to make the video-sharing service easily available to children and their concerned parents by only showing appropriate content for kids. But recently, two prominent Child advocacy groups named The Campaign for Commercial Free Childhood (CCFC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) has reported the YouTube Kids app to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stating that the app is showing content which is not only inappropriate for kids but is damaging and harmful to them as well.
According to the report sent to FTC by these two organizations, the YouTube Kids app gives access to content that involves sexual content, foul language and demonstration of unsafe behaviors like risky magic tricks or jumping from heights etc. Both CDD and CCFC made a video showing how the explicit content is easily accessible to under-aged kids.
A statement released by the groups said,” Google is deceiving parents by marketing YouTube Kids as a safe place for children under five to explore when, in reality, the app is rife with videos that would not meet anyone’s definition of ‘family friendly.”
YouTube hasn’t responded to these latest allegations but it did said that the content which will be shown in the YouTube Kids will now be double checked before approving it for the kids version The two-step verification will involve a thorough check using algorithm to sort out videos and then a team of people will manually filter out videos.
This issue doesn’t mean that YouTube Kids has failed to deliver what it promised. The app is still better than the original YouTube app for parents who allow their children to watch content on their mobile.
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