YouTube introduces new safety controls for teens

👆 YouTube is trying to keep Joy at the helm of the control panel. Recently, the video behemoth introduced a new set of controls to help parents monitor their teens' activity site-wide.

The new feature allows parents to link their accounts directly to their teenager’s. Parents will then receive notifications about their teen’s number of uploads, subscriptions, and comments. They won’t know anything about the content itself, however, in an effort to protect teenagers’ autonomy.

This isn’t the first move YouTube has taken to increase teen safety measures. Last year, the site introduced safeguards to prevent teens from watching repeated videos that may glorify certain body types.

• The fitness-video tool prevents teens from falling into a rabbit hole that could potentially lead to negative beliefs about their own bodies, blocking repeated viewing of videos that compare physical features and idealize certain body types over others.

Similar move: Instagram yesterday also unveiled new protective measures for teens.

📝 Zoom out: Social media is becoming a real energy-vampire for today’s youth, with 41% of American teenagers with high social media use reporting poor or extremely poor mental health.

However, online protection for minors has recently been addressed on both the federal and state levels. On July 30, the Senate approved the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, as well as the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act. At least 30 states also have pending legislation relating to children and social media in the works.