Our Youth Principles
The following principles are core to YouTube's work on creating a safer and more enriching environment for young people.
Through these Principles, we hope to contribute to the important conversations taking place among policy makers, families, researchers, and experts around building an internet that young people deserve.
See more in our blog post.
For our full legislative framework, please visit here.
Protecting children and teenagers is and must always be core to our work, and we want to make their experiences on our platform safer and more enriching.
We also have a fundamental responsibility to understand young peoples’ mental health needs, develop safeguards to address those needs, and serve as allies and advocates for their wellbeing.
YouTube gives parents and caregivers ways to customize the online experiences that are best for their families. We design different modes of YouTube, parental controls, features, and settings for different age ranges, so families can set the balance of supervision and independence that’s right for them and their child’s or teenager’s development.
And because there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, YouTube offers resources, guidance, and support to help families make smart, informed choices for their young kids, older teenagers, and every child in between.
We keep high-quality and age-appropriate content free and accessible to all young people. We never show personalized ads to kids, and we don’t think others should either.
Our recommendations system is designed to provide a safer and more enriching experience for younger users across YouTube. It helps connect them with high-quality content — informed by quality principles developed in collaboration with independent child development and digital-wellbeing experts — that inspires curiosity, imagination, and creativity.
Interests, needs, and developmental capabilities vary widely between an 8-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 17-year-old.
YouTube works with outside experts in children’s media, child development, digital learning, and citizenship from a range of academic, non-profit, and clinical backgrounds to develop age-appropriate experiences that support and protect young people at every stage of life.
Young people are often early adopters when it comes to innovation. We want them to have positive experiences in using new tools, so we work to assess and mitigate risks of new technologies from the outset.
We work with industry experts, researchers, and parents to ensure families have a clear understanding of how new technologies can help younger users learn, create, and grow, as well as how they can have limitations.