YouTube is stepping up its commitment to family safety with the introduction of a new suite of parental controls tailored for parents of teens. Announced on Wednesday, this update allows parents to link their own YouTube accounts to their teens’ accounts, providing a clearer window into their teens’ activities on the platform.
With this new feature, parents will be able to monitor key aspects of their teen’s YouTube presence. This includes receiving alerts about channel activity such as the number of video uploads, new subscriptions, and posted comments. Although parents won’t have direct access to the content of these activities, they will be kept in the loop through email notifications about significant events like new uploads or livestreams.
Notably, YouTube reassures users that linking accounts will not impact the algorithm that curates content for the teen. The platform’s recommendations will continue to be personalized to the individual user’s viewing habits. Additionally, parents will not have the ability to correct or alter the age their teen provided when signing up for YouTube, as the platform maintains the age initially entered during account creation.
However, the new parental controls do provide a significant level of oversight. Parents can be alerted to new uploads across both YouTube and YouTube Shorts, including those that are private or unlisted. They will also be notified if their teen changes the privacy settings on any of their videos.
This latest development builds on the foundation of parental controls that YouTube first introduced in 2021. At that time, the platform offered supervised accounts designed for younger children under the age of consent for online services (13 in the U.S., but varying in other countries). YouTube had hinted at plans to extend these protections to older age groups, and this new feature is a realization of that promise.
The move comes as major tech companies are increasingly aligning themselves with upcoming regulations that seek to govern how minors interact with social media. In the United States, several states including Utah and Arkansas have passed laws requiring parental consent for children under 18 to join social media platforms. While some of these laws are currently stalled in the courts, they underscore a growing trend towards stricter oversight of minors’ online activities.
YouTube’s decision to introduce enhanced controls for teens mirrors similar efforts by other social media giants like TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, which have already implemented parental supervision features. Although YouTube isn’t traditionally viewed as a social media platform in the same vein as Facebook or TikTok, it does offer a social experience complete with user profiles, creator following, comment sections, and algorithm-driven content—making it essential for YouTube to adopt comparable safety measures.
Starting this week, parents will be able to link their accounts to their teens’ accounts through YouTube’s new Family Center hub within the app. Additionally, Google’s Family Link service will offer another entry point for parents to access these controls. The feature will gradually roll out to YouTube’s global user base over the next few weeks.
In addition to these controls, YouTube is partnering with Common Sense Networks, a subsidiary of the well-known nonprofit Common Sense Media, to provide resources that help parents guide their teens toward responsible content creation. The platform also collaborated with its Youth and Families Advisory Committee to ensure the new controls meet the needs of both teens and parents.
These updates mark a significant step forward in YouTube’s efforts to create a safer environment for younger users. With over 100 million active users per month engaging with YouTube’s kid-friendly products—including the YouTube Kids app and supervised experiences for pre-teens—this new feature ensures that teens, too, can enjoy the platform with an added layer of parental guidance and safety.
