YouTube comes up with new rules to support mental health of teens

YouTube, which has been working to support teen well-being and mental health, has now announced a few more ‘guardrails’ to ensure their safety, and privacy. The Google-owned company is limiting repeated recommendations of videos related to topics that idealise unhealthy standards or behaviours and emphasise potentially problematic messages. This is first being done for teens in the US, with more countries to be added over the next year.  

The company’s Youth and Families Advisory Committee, a team of independent experts in child development, digital learning, children’s media and more, helped YouTube identify categories of content that may be harmless as a single video but could be problematic for some teens if viewed repeatedly. 

That includes content that compares physical features and idealizes some types over others, idealizes specific fitness levels or body weights, or displays social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation. 

Community Guidelines will continue to be enforced to remove content and prevent minors from seeing videos that violate policies on child safety, eating disorders, hate speech and harassment, according to a company announcement.  

Besides this latest announcement, YouTube is also updating a few existing products to make them more relevant for teens. Its Take a Break and Bedtime reminders, existing since 2018, will be more visually prominent and appear more frequently, especially for minors whose accounts have the reminders on by default.