New ways to support teens and families on YouTube
Jan 14, 2026 [[read-time]] minute read
YouTube is where teens come to watch what they love – everything from brushing up on their studies, to their favorite creators, to buzzworthy podcasts, to epic sports highlights. We believe in protecting kids in the digital world, not from the digital world. That’s why we’ve spent over a decade building tailored products and built-in protections for our youngest viewers.
When parents and experts tell us what they want from kid and teen accounts, they focus on three areas:
- Controls that help teach kids how to consume content responsibly, and options for parents to make the right choice for their family.
- Content that is age-appropriate and stricter policies and safeguards for younger audiences.
- The right experience for every age with a simpler account setup that includes built-in protections and makes it easier for parents to ensure their child is in the right YouTube experience.
Today we’re sharing a few updates that will help parents tailor their family’s YouTube experience, especially for teen viewers:
Additional controls for mindful viewing
Parents can now help teens be even more intentional about how they watch, with a control to set the amount of time spent scrolling Shorts. And soon, parents will see the option to set the timer to zero. This is an industry-first feature that puts parents firmly in control of the amount of short-form content their kids watch. This also gives parents flexibility. For example, they can set the Shorts feed limit to zero when they want their teen to use YouTube to focus on homework, and change it to 60 minutes during a long car trip to be entertained. Additionally, parents of supervised accounts will be able to set custom Bedtime and Take a Break reminders, building on the existing default-on wellbeing protections for teens.
A blueprint for high-quality teen content
We’re introducing new principles and a creator guide to steer teens toward content that is fun, age-appropriate, higher-quality, and more enriching. Developed in partnership with our Youth Advisory Committee and the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA and supported by global experts from the American Psychological Association, Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital, and other global organizations, these principles outline the types of content that are deemed to be low quality and high quality for teen audiences.
We’ll use these principles and guide to educate our global creator community on their role in supporting teens on YouTube. The principles also inform our recommendation system, allowing us to raise high quality videos - like those from Khan Academy, CrashCourse and TED-Ed - and increase the frequency they are shown to teens. This work builds on our existing kids quality content principles for viewers under 13 and safeguards for teen recommendations.
Making it even simpler to get the right experience for the right age
Families already have the peace of mind that YouTube will place teens into protected under-18 accounts. And in the coming weeks, we're introducing an updated sign up experience that lets parents create a new kid account and easily switch between accounts in the mobile app depending on who’s watching with just a few taps. This makes it easier to ensure that everyone in the family is in the right viewing experience with the content settings and recommendations of age-appropriate content they actually want to watch.
We are committed to growing alongside the families who choose to watch YouTube, ensuring that YouTube remains a safe and inspiring space for the next generation to explore.