Long a comments section bad boy, change coming may keep kids from wading into the comments cesspool. YouTube's introduced its "read-only" comments option on a child's supervised experience on the video-sharing site for parents who supervise a child's account, the company announced in an email to them.

The company will start introducing the feature for everyone in the coming weeks, YouTube says.

It is one of the biggest changes YouTube has made to its parental control features since increases for minors were introduced in 2021 after lawmakers pressed for greater protections.
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Comments were completely turned off, thereby not allowing reading and commenting from children. Still, YouTube said at the time it would work with parents and experts to add comments using an age-appropriate approach for older kids in the future.

The new feature comes as part of the "Explore More" and "Most of YouTube" two out of three options by which parents can customize a child-friendly YouTube experience for their kids.

The former is good for younger explorers, who can only watch videos with content ratings for viewers aged 13 and above. Meanwhile, "Most of YouTube" is good for slightly older kids who can access nearly all the content on YouTube except for the ones restricted to viewing by adults only.

This will mean that, by default, comments can be read but not written under both of these modes for content setting. This will prevent live chat as well.

Parents who prefer to have no commenting facility are able to move their child into the "Explore" environment, which is intended for viewers aged 9+. This normally represents the first step into the full YouTube experience after using the separate YouTube Kids app as a younger child.

YouTube states that parents can view and adjust their child's settings from the parent settings on YouTube, or else through Google's Family Link parental control app. They can also view their child's history on the child's device by signing into the My Activity setting, it added.

The company further says that the YouTube settings that the parent has chosen for their child will not apply when the child is using a version of YouTube that is not directly accessed. Using the application for example, when a child accesses embedded YouTube content hosted on another site.

The question now is whether Congress's efforts to make the tech industries do more to protect kids from the negative impacts of their services extend to codifying those demands into new laws-or has been satisfied by the momentum gained by the Kids Online Safety Act in demanding sturdier parental controls from platform makers. COPPA 2.0 (Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act) is also coming, an effort dedicated to increased data protections, more privacy, and an end to all targeted advertising to kids and teens. A responsible YouTube is getting out in front of any necessary changes to its parental controls platform by "baking in" new protections by default.

In the wake of launching its parental controls last year, YouTube on Tuesday announced a series of product updates aimed at making the video-sharing site safer for teenagers. According to the tech giant, the set of new features includes limits on repeated views of certain topics, revamped "take a break" and "bedtime" reminders, among other things.

Although the email informed parents, the company has yet to make a public statement on its blog regarding read-only comments. Inquiries for comment have not been returned.