In September of 2019, YouTube announced a series of changes to better protect kids and their privacy on YouTube and to address concerns raised by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Specifically, that all creators will be required to designate their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio, and data from anyone watching a video designated as made for kids will be treated as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user.

In November of 2019, for a few countries, YouTube released a setting to select weather your content is for kids, or it is not, so it can be easier for creators to designate their content

YouTube is starting to roll out these changes globally. YouTube really wanted to outline what you will start to see in the coming days

When you select that your channel and/or video is for kids, you will lose these key features. As all of these features collect some kind of data, which is what Google/YouTube doesn’t want to do. As they want to collect as little info about people under 13 as they can.

• Personalized ads,
• Super Chat,
• Super Stickers,
• donations,
• merch/ticketing shelves
• Comments,
• live chat,
• notification bell, playlists
• Cards/end screens,
• branding watermarks

According to the FTC’s guidance on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a video is made for kids if:

• Children are the primary audience.
• Children are not the primary audience, but the video is still directed to children based on factors such as the subject matter of the video, whether the video has an emphasis on kids characters, themes, toys or games,

YouTube always recommends for children under 13 to use the YouTube Kids app.

We continue to recommend parents use YouTube Kids if they plan to allow kids under 13 to watch independently. Tens of millions of people use YouTube Kids every week but we want even more parents to be aware of the app and its benefits

– YouTube Official Blog Article

YouTube are training their teams in order to get better at this, as stated in the blog post “To that end, we are introducing new, mandatory annual training for our teams about our requirements in this area”

ORIGINAL YOUTUBE BLOG POST: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2019/09/an-update-on-kids.html?m=1

TWITTER THREAD: https://twitter.com/youtubecreators/status/1214242636103639040?s=19