• by Colin Kirkland , September 5, 2024

In an effort to better protect the well being of teens on its platform, YouTube is expanding safeguards focused on specific content recommendations, including videos that encourage a certain fitness level and physical appearance, which the company has linked to eating disorders and negative feelings among teenagers.

The safeguard first rolled out in the U.S. last year in partnership with a team of “independent experts” from YouTube's Youth and Families Advisory Committee and will now apply to teens across the globe.

“Working with the Advisory Committee, we identified categories of content that may be innocuous as a single video, but could be problematic for some teens if viewed repetitively,” YouTube writes in a blog post. “These categories include content that compares physical features and idealizes some types over others, idealizes specific fitness levels or body weights, or displays social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation.”

According to the Google-owned company, the Advisory Committee helped the platform make content decisions based on the developmental stages of teens.

“One insight is that teens are more likely than adults to form negative beliefs about themselves when seeing repeated messages about ideal standards in content they consume online,” the company says.

“As a teen is developing thoughts about who they are and their own standards for themselves, repeated consumption of content featuring idealized standards that starts to shape an unrealistic internal standard could lead some to form negative beliefs about themselves,” YouTube's global head of health, Garth Graham, said recently.

Along with recommended content promoting idealized body types, YouTube says it will also begin limiting exposure to videos that display “social aggression” in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation.

The announcement comes one day after YouTube said it is making it possible for parents to link their YouTube accounts to their teen's accounts. The new supervisory measure, available in the app';s Family Center, is designed to keep parents informed about their teen'd channel activity on the platform while offering a chance for parents to provide encouragement and advice on responsible content creation in real time.