YouTube said experts on its youth and families advisory committee had said that certain categories that may be “innocuous” as a single video could be “problematic” if viewed repeatedly.
The new guidelines, now introduced in the UK and around the world, apply to content that:
idealises some physical features over others, such as beauty routines to make your nose look slimmer; idealises fitness or body weights, such as exercise routines that encourage pursuing a certain look; or encourages social aggression, such as physical intimidation.
YouTube will no longer make repeated recommendations of those topics to teenagers who have registered their age with the platform as logged-in users. The safety framework has already been introduced in the US.
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In the UK, the newly introduced
Online Safety Act requires tech companies to protect children from harmful content, as well as considering how their algorithms may expose under-18s to damaging material. The act refers to algorithms’ ability to cause harm by pushing large amounts of content to a child over a short space of time, and requires tech companies to assess any risk such algorithms could pose to children.
Sonia Livingstone, a professor of social psychology at the London School of Economics, said a recent report by the Children’s Society charity underlined the importance of tackling social media’s impact on self-esteem.
A survey in the Good Childhood report showed that nearly one in four girls in the UK were dissatisfied with their appearance.
