Background of the Problem
Today kids have become more active online at a very tender age. They spend a lot of screen time watching content online especially on YouTube. It might be a convenient and even educational platform, but there can also be adverse effects from all that viewing.
- Kids are getting exposed to random videos on YouTube that are not suitable for their age, such as obscene, violent, inappropriate, adult content.
- Kids are spending time continuously on YouTube Shorts & Instagram Reels leading to lack of their mental focus and productivity.
- Not limited to YouTube, Kids are befriending and messaging unknown Instagram persons without parents’ knowledge which is a major reason for many of the cyber-crimes.
YouTube caters to a world-wide audience comprising a wide range of ages and interests. Because of this, YouTube’s Suggested Videos can open kids up to a whole array of content which is quite simply not appropriate for them.
There is an enormous amount of research and publications citing the perils kids may face due to early exposure to such uncensored content. Children have what is known as Developmental Milestones, which means, that there are certain Skills and Knowledge that they should attain via a specific age. Early Exposure to inappropriate material which does not match accepted developmental milestones can contribute to behavioral, psychological and developmental challenges in children.
Why Existing Solutions are not Effective?
YouTube Filters:
Although YouTube is trying to offer a workable solution with the help of YouTube Filters, but, right in the YouTube Settings, it says that “Filters are not 100% Guaranteed”. Which means that content you want to keep away from your kids, will still be available on YouTube either due to a YouTube Filter “miss” or because YouTube will only take action against inappropriate videos when someone reports them and flags them as “Red”.
Firewalls:
Firewalls are also not flexible in terms of content filtering, since it provides only 2 options in the firewall settings with reference to YouTube: “Allow Completely” or “Deny Completely”.
Other Options:
Today, we have many sorts of Parental Control Apps and solutions, but these are not effective or flexible content filtering solutions that we want for our kids, as we still cannot micro manage and control which YouTube Videos our kids should or should not watch.
The prevailing gap and ineffectiveness of existing solutions and uncensored content persistent in YouTube is quite evident from the periodic publication reports from Google’s — YouTube Transparency Report.
According to the latest YouTube Transparency Report on “Videos Removed, by Removal Reason”, out of over 5 million videos that were removed from YouTube during the period from July 2022 to September 2022, 36% were pertaining to Child Safety, 18% Violent, 14% Nudity or Sexual, 11% Harmful or Dangerous.
Yocofee Content Filtering for YouTube and Instagram
Safe YouTube for Kids
These aspects have been taken into consideration, in a dedicated Content Filtering App called Yocofee. Yocofee is a Unique and First and Only Solution-of-its-Kind in the market now. Yocofee works based on the Role & Channel Based Access Control technique along with a smart On-Device Network Firewall.
Parents can easily search and shortlist the YouTube Channels they want to approve or deny their kids from watching. They can easily add these channels and compile a curated YouTube playlist of kid’s favorite content. With Yocofee, parents can control and manage each and every Content that kids watch on YouTube. If kids click on any video that is not part of approved channels in the playlist, that content will be blocked.
Safe Instagram for Kids
Yocofee is also offering Content Filtering for another popular social media platform, Instagram. With this feature, only those Instagram Profiles that Parents approve can be viewed by their child. All Unapproved Instagram Profile content will be blocked.
If kids would like to watch any content which is blocked, kids can add those YouTube Channels / Instagram Profiles to a Wish List.
This wish list can later be approved or denied by parents.
Yocofee is bundled with Content Filtering for YouTube and Instagram, Smart On-Device Network Firewall and Apple Family Controls Framework to provide a safe content viewing experience for kids.
Yocofee is available for iPhone and iPad and can be downloaded from the App Store.
Visit www.yocofee.com for more details.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Shashank Verma on Unsplash
I was searching for something similar for a long period. Never found anything, until I see this post.
Thanks to THE Good Men. Excellent information and updates here..
– Big Dad