This week Google gathered experts together in Dublin at the “Growing Up in the Digital Age Summit” to discuss keeping children and young people safe online.
New Android features connect your digital and physical worlds, from expressive audio captions to AI-generated image descriptions by Gemini.
Be Internet Awesome World on Roblox will teach kids and teens online safety in an interactive and fun way.
Today we’re announcing new settings and features to help parents, teens and families navigate safer experiences online.
An update on how we strive to protect, respect and empower young people online, including a new Google.org commitment of €5M to help teens build media literacy for AI.
Today, we're announcing a 5 euro commitment to support NGOs in Europe and hosting a summit focused on internet safety for children.
We’ve dedicated the last several years to creating products and services that have families in mind. Our goal is to allow kids of all ages to explore the best of what technology has to offer, in a safer way. We respect that each family’s relationship with technology is unique, so we want to give parents the tools and flexibility they need to find the right balance for their families — while also delivering more age-appropriate experiences.
Today, we're updating Family Link and Google TV with experiences for parents and kids alike, to help families build healthy, positive digital habits together.
Over the last five years, the Family Link app on Android and iOS have been helping families stay safer online. Whether it’s with your child’s first Android phone or exploring content on YouTube and Google TV, we’ve provided parents with the tools to set screen time limits and guide children to age-appropriate content.
Based on parents’ feedback, we redesigned Family Link to bring our tools to the forefront and make them easier to use. Across the Controls, Location and Highlights tabs, you’ll find new experiences like “Today Only” screen time limits, alerts for when your children arrive and leave a location and recommended content from trusted partners around online safety.
For easier access, parents and their children can also access Family Link online in a new web experience. Stay tuned for these changes to start rolling out today and complete over the next few weeks.
Google TV is an entertainment experience made for the whole family and its kids profiles are easy to use for kids of all ages. With the addition of managed watchlists, Google-powered kids recommendations and supervised accounts on YouTube, Google TV’s kids profiles just got even more helpful.
Bringing recommendations and watchlists to kids profiles makes it easier to find the perfect shows and movies. Kids can easily browse top entertainment from their approved apps, and you can build a “must watch” list just for them from their TV and mobile device. And for parents with older kids who are ready to move on from YouTube Kids, their tweens can now use a supervised Google Account to start exploring YouTube on their Google TV kids profile. These updates will also start rolling out today and complete over the next few weeks.
Regardless of the brand or device, we believe you should be able to benefit from the same quality experiences. Whether it’s for entertainment on Google TV or to help guide your child’s online experience with Family Link, we hope you’ll check out and enjoy these new updates on your devices.
We're committed to building products that are secure by default, private by design, and that put people in control. And while our policies don’t allow kids under 13 to create a standard Google account, we’ve worked hard to design enriching product experiences specifically for them, teens, and families. Through Family Link, we allow parents to set up supervised accounts for their children, set screen time limits, and more. Our Be Internet Awesome digital literacy program helps kids learn how to be safe and engaged digital citizens; and our dedicated YouTube Kids app, Kids Space andteacher approved apps in Play offer experiences that are customized for younger audiences.
Technology has helped kids and teens during the pandemic stay in school through lockdowns and maintain connections with family and friends. As kids and teens spend more time online, parents, educators, child safety and privacy experts, and policy makers are rightly concerned about how to keep them safe. We engage with these groups regularly, and share these concerns.
Some countries are implementing regulations in this area, and as we comply with these regulations, we’re looking at ways to develop consistent product experiences and user controls for kids and teens globally. Today, we’re announcing a variety of new policies and updates.
While we already provide a range of removal options for people using Google Search, children are at particular risk when it comes to controlling their imagery on the internet. In the coming weeks, we’ll introduce a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, or their parent or guardian, to request the removal of their images from Google Image results. Of course, removing an image from Search doesn’t remove it from the web, but we believe this change will help give young people more control of their images online.
Some of our most popular products help kids and teens explore their interests, learn more about the world, and connect with friends. We’re committed to constantly making these experiences safer for them. That’s why in the coming weeks and months we're going to make a number of changes to Google Accounts for people under 18:
https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/new-safety-and-digital-wellbeing-options-younger-people-youtube-and-youtube-kids/
.We’ll be expanding safeguards to prevent age-sensitive ad categories from being shown to teens, and we will block ad targeting based on the age, gender, or interests of people under 18. We’ll start rolling out these updates across our products globally over the coming months. Our goal is to ensure we’re providing additional protections and delivering age-appropriate experiences for ads on Google.
In Family Link, parents can set screen time limits and reminders for their kids’ supervised devices. And, on Assistant-enabled smart devices, we give parents control through Digital Wellbeing tools available in the Google Home app. In the coming months, we’ll roll out new Digital Wellbeing filters that allow people to block news, podcasts, and access to webpages on Assistant-enabled smart devices.
On YouTube, we’ll turn on take a break and bedtime reminders and turn off autoplay for users under 18. And, on YouTube Kids we’ll add an autoplay option and turn it off by default to empower parents to make the right choice for their families.
Data plays an important role in making our products functional and helpful. It’s our job to make it easy for kids and teens to understand what data is being collected, why, and how it is used. Based on research, we’re developing engaging, easy-to-understand materials for young people and their parents to help them better understand our data practices. These resources will begin to roll out globally in the coming months.
Transparency Resources: The Family Link Privacy Guide for Children and Teens and the Teen Privacy Guide
We regularly engage with kids and teens, parents, governments, industry leaders, and experts in the fields of privacy, child safety, wellbeing and education to design better, safer products for kids and teens. Having an accurate age for a user can be an important element in providing experiences tailored to their needs. Yet, knowing the accurate age of our users across multiple products and surfaces, while at the same time respecting their privacy and ensuring that our services remain accessible, is a complex challenge. It will require input from regulators, lawmakers, industry bodies, technology providers, and others to address it – and to ensure that we all build a safer internet for kids.
