YouTube offers you and your family hours upon hours of great content- and the best bit is- most of it is free! Children can search for their favourite TV show and they will find countless of episodes or clips to keep themselves occupied. This can be helpful for all of the family on a long journey, or a typically Irish rainy day at home. On top of this, the countless educational videos available can help them learn more or understand better the topics they may need help in.

But what happens when the video ends? How do you know what they click on next? Is the content suitable? What about possibly unsuitable videos that are trending? With over 150,000 hours of video footage uploaded to YouTube every day, it is possible that your child could innocently click on something they should not see.

So don’t worry, help is at hand!

What is Restricted Mode?

Restricted Mode can be activated in your browser or app and will help filter out content that is unsuitable for children. Filtering is done through a number of activities on YouTube, such as age-restriction and community flagging.

And, because YouTube is owned by Google, there is the added benefit of having ‘SafeSearch’ built in – a further help when blocking unwanted content.

How do you set up ‘Restricted mode’?

Well with 6 easy to follow steps you can have it setup in no time.

  1. Open your browser, such as Internet Explorer, Chrome or Firefox. (Note: if your PC has all or some of these browsers, you should set this up on each one). Now, goto the following website www.youtube.com.
  1. On the top right hand side of the page, click on ‘Sign In’. If you already have a Google account, use these details to sign in- otherwise create a new account.1
  2. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click on ‘Restricted mode’.2
  3. Click ‘On’ and ‘Save’ as shown below.3
  4. Now, sign out of your account, and scroll to the bottom of the page. ‘Restricted Mode: On’ will be displayed.4
  5. The browser is now locked to restricted mode for YouTube videos only. To turn Restricted mode off, you must log back into your account with your password. A search for inappropriate content will return the message: ‘Some results have been removed because Restricted Mode is enabled’.