YouTube… What you should know
  • Youtube is the most popular social media app in the world
  • The total number of people who use YouTube – 1,300,000,000
  • 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute!
  • Almost 5 billion videos are watched on Youtube every single day
  • Youtube has a minimum age limit of 13

So… What is YouTube?

YouTube is a video sharing platform that allows people to discover, watch and share videos.

You can create your own Youtube channel and subscribe to the channels of other people whose content you enjoy. Viewers can ‘Like’ and ‘Dislike’, comment and share videos to other social media sites or to friends. Many people use YouTube for video blogging or ‘vlogging’. YouTube can also be used to live stream, which is video that is broadcast and recorded in real time.

Youtube is often used by kids and teens to keep up with their favourite Influencers and Celebrities, but is also used as an educational tool, learning how to cook, clean and other life skills!

So now we know what YouTube is… What should we be aware of?

There is a lot of inappropriate material on YouTube that’s easily accessible to everyone: swearing / inappropriate language, sexual content, drugs, and alcohol.

YouTube has, and continues to, restrict upsetting and violent stunts and pranks. This does not mean however, that this content isn’t out there and available on the platform.
This is where Youtube Kids comes in…

What is YouTube Kids?

Youtube Kids was created for children aged 7 and up to have a safer, more restricted YouTube experience. Users can access music, child-friendly user-made content, TV shows (such as Thomas and Friends), and educational videos.

Safety Features

Youtube Kids has better parental controls than its original counterpart, including:

A timer – where you can set time-limits for app usage

Enable/Disable search – where you can decide whether or not your child can search for videos on the app

Video Approval – where you can select videos, channels and collections that you have approved prior.

Youtube has also created a Parental Control instructions manual, which you can access here

To read YouTube’s Community Guidelines, you can click here