YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids

logo as of 2019
Screenshot of the home page of YouTube Kids
Type of site	Video hosting service
Founded	February 15, 2015; 9 years ago (February 15, 2015)
Headquarters	United States
Area served	Worldwide (excluding blocked countries)
Owner	Alphabet, Inc.
Key people	Neal Mohan (CEO)
Industry	Internet Video hosting service
Parent	Google (through YouTube LLC)
URL	www.youtubekids.com
Advertising	Google AdSense
Current status	Active
Content license	Proprietary

YouTube Kids is an American video app and website for children developed by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. The app provides a version of the service oriented solely towards children, with curated selections of content, parental control features, and filtering of videos deemed inappropriate for viewing by children under the age of 13, in accordance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits the regular YouTube app from advertising to children under the age of 13.^[1]

First released on February 15, 2015, as an Android and iOS mobile app,^[2] the app has since been released for LG, Samsung, and Sony smart TVs, as well as for Android TV.^[3][4] On May 27, 2020, it became available on Apple TV.^[5] As of September 2019, the app is available in 69 countries.^[6] YouTube launched a web-based version of YouTube Kids on August 30, 2019.^[7]

YouTube Kids has faced criticism from advocacy groups, particularly the Fairplay Organization, for concerns surrounding the app's use of commercial advertising, as well as algorithmic suggestions of videos that may be inappropriate for the app's target audience, as the app has been associated with a controversy surrounding disturbing and/or violent videos depicting characters from children's media franchises. Criticism over the videos led YouTube to announce that it would take more stringent actions to review and filter such videos when reported by the community, and prevent them from being accessible from within the YouTube Kids app.