New mental health & wellbeing tools – built just for teens
Oct 14, 2025 [[read-time]] minute read
At YouTube, we’ve built specific age-appropriate experiences for our younger users for more than a decade. Today, we’re announcing our newest offering – mental health & wellbeing content in a dedicated surface built just for teens.
When seeking out age-appropriate information on common mental health and wellbeing topics like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and eating disorders, teens will now see a shelf of videos from trusted sources. Our goal is to make it easier for them to find credible information that is tailored to their developmental stage of life.
In countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico, France, and Australia, these shelves will start rolling out for teens in the coming weeks.
For a video to be eligible for inclusion in the shelf, the content needs to be evidence-based, teen-centric and engaging. To meet these requirements, we worked with organizations from around the world who specialize in providing mental health and wellbeing information for teens to produce the videos. All of the organizations understand the importance of reaching teens on platforms where they already turn to for information, one of which is YouTube.
The National Alliance for Eating Disorders has developed content featuring leading experts, researchers, and individuals with lived experience to address common questions like, “What do you say when you think someone may be struggling with an eating disorder?”
“YouTube has become a critical resource for teens seeking help and support for eating disorders. Outside of Google, YouTube is the single biggest driver of outreach to our helpline. When teens are looking for answers, they often turn to YouTube—and YouTube helps connect them directly to us.” - Johanna S. Kandel, Founder and CEO of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders
The Jed Foundation worked with leading YouTube creators to develop a series called ‘Mind Matters’ where experts sit down with creators to talk about topics like ADHD, anxiety and depression.
“By working with creators who care about mental health and pairing them with experts, our series on YouTube allows us to uniquely get to the heart of important mental health topics that teens all face today in an approachable format.” - John A. MacPhee, CEO of The Jed Foundation
The Child Mind Institute has been dedicated to transforming the lives of children and families experiencing mental health, and is another one of our partners in this endeavor.
“At the Child Mind Institute, we know how important it is for teens to have access to mental health resources that feel relevant to their lives. Meeting young people where they are, on platforms like YouTube, helps break down barriers and stigma, and empowers them to seek support. We’re proud to contribute to this initiative, including through Project You Are Okay, which was designed specifically to speak directly to teens in ways that feel authentic and supportive.” - Dr. Harold Koplewicz, founder and medical director of the Child Mind Institute
We’ve invested deeply over the years to help people who have questions about their health find information from high quality, credible sources – everything from health source information panels that let viewers know that the person they are hearing from is a licensed healthcare professional, to dedicated shelves of content for specific health conditions.
We’ve also invested specifically for teens, including working with our Youth and Families Advisory Committee to develop teen-specific guardrails on both recommendations and content. This work is all supported by industry-leading policies on what content is allowed on YouTube and what can earn ad revenue. We regularly update these policies and recently strengthened our guidance around content promoting eating disorders to better protect our users.
It’s important to everyone at YouTube that this is a platform where teens can safely explore their passions and also find answers to their questions - including questions about their health and wellbeing. As a doctor and father of four, it makes me happy to see so many health organizations from around the world recognize the role YouTube plays in helping to reach teens with health information when they need it.