Is YouTube Safe for Kids Now? Platform Tests Read-Only Comments in Supervised Mode

The comments section on YouTube has historically had a pretty bad reputation, but the video platform has recently rolled out a change that might just change that perception. In its email to parents who supervise their child’s account, the company announced that it will be introducing a “read-only” comments option on its Kids platform.

The feature is supposed to roll out in the “coming weeks.” 

This change is one of the biggest adjustments YouTube has made to its parental control features since it introduced the increased protection feature for minors back in 2021. Previously, comments were fully disabled on the platform, this meant that you could not both read or write comments on the platform.

YouTube stated at the time that it would work with parents and experts to bring the comments back through an age-appropriate approach for kids in the future. The new addition can be applied to two of the three content features on the platform, namely the “Explore More” and “Most of YouTube” features.

While the former allows kids to explore videos with content ratings for viewers 13 and up, the “Most of YouTube” allows older kids to access most of YouTube’s content except for videos that are specifically age-restricted. 

What this means is that children will be able to read but not write comments under both of these content settings and the live chat will be turned off as well.

Parents who want to disable comments entirely can also toggle their child’s “Explore” setting, aimed at viewers 9 and above, to off. They can also view and change this setting from the parental control settings via Google’s Family Link parental control app.