Starting today, all creators are required to mark their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio. -YouTube Creators Email
YouTube will be limiting the data they collect form videos that are targeting children. This is in effort to comply with the FTC’s demands that they be responsible for the information they gather on their site which lists children among their most frequent audience members. Wording in the email suggests that YouTube is “helping” creators comply with COPPA as well as meeting the demands the Federal Trade Commission put on YouTube as a media company.
YouTube will use an algorithm to monitor content for child centric content and flag it as such if it is not flagged by the creator of the video. The email reminds creators to be vigilant to properly tag their videos if they are made for children as failure to comply could cause them to be in violation of the FTC’s demands.
The FTC has outlined what constitutes children’s content and YouTube has that information available on their support page. YouTube’s announcement briefly defines children’s content as:
• It is directed to children as the primary audience (e.g. videos for preschoolers).
• It is directed to children but children are a secondary audience (e.g. cartoon video that primarily targets teenagers but is also intended for younger kids).
YouTube’s guidelines state that they may override content creator’s settings if their content seems to be geared toward kids but isn’t marked as such. This could result in content creators being demonetized or held accountable in some other way for not properly categorizing their content.
What Parents Should Know
The FTC fined YouTube for their inability to comply with COPPA and told them they had to have a plan by next year to keep children’s data private on their site. Many thought YouTube Kids was the solution but so few parents actually used the kid version of YouTube so children remain a major audience for YouTube’s main site and app. The information creators give YouTube about their videos and channels will help YouTube know what videos to collect data from that will be used for advertising in the future. Also, the advertising on videos marked as “for children” will be different, focusing on the content of the video as an indicator of the audience rather than viewing data from the viewers themselves.
These changes, in my opinion, are a step in the right direction for YouTube. Their collection of data from young audiences have been a point of contention for tech safety experts, security and privacy agencies, and family advocacy groups for several years now. The policies handed down by the FTC are in direct response of some of these experts and agencies asking for an investigation into YouTube for their lack of compliance with COPPA.
As parents we rarely think about our kids digital footprint being collected and used against them but it is happing every time they log on to an app or game. It is important, however, to remember that the trail they leave behind online will follow them for the rest of their lives. The things they buy, the sites they visit, the videos they watch, and the games they play are all being compiled to create a profile on them that will be used to market to them online for years to come. If parents remember that our children’s web traffic is being collected we can take steps to protect them from excessive data collection. Encourage them to use messenger apps that are made just for kids. [Facebook Messenger Kids, not WhatsApp or FB Messenger.] Remind them that what they share online becomes public the moment they share it. Tell them they should only use video and game apps that are intended for children and made by major developers who are more likely to comply with COPPA. Parents are responsible for the safety of their children, as well as their privacy and security so take the steps you can to keep their data private.
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