YouTube Kids is rolling out across 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa region (inc. Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon). From the official announcement via Google Arabia blog, this is a great addition for families in the region to control online video viewing for their children.
The app is completely standalone and tailored to children 12 years or younger, filled with content to help families support their children’s exploration and curiosity.
Parents Oversee Viewing Habits
Usign the following features, parents have the ultimate flexibility to control the video viewing activity on YouTube Kids that is right for their children:
- Individual Profiles: Create upto 8 profiles considering the different ages, content settings and interests for every child.
- Handpick content: ‘Parent Approved content’ mode allows parents to choose individual videos and channels to make available or exclude to their child in the app easily.
- Turn off Search: Don’t want your children searching for videos? You can turn off search so that they’re limited to videos from a set of channels.
- Built–in timer: Parents can set the integrated timer. YouTube Kids will notify your kids it’s time to get off the app with a friendly “Time’s up” notification.
- Block Channels or Content: Parents can choose to block specific channels or content with the click of a button.
Channels and playlists will be organized into categories for children including Learning & Hobbies, Arts & Crafts, YouTubers & Family Vloggers, Music & Dance, Toys & Play and more. Accompanying the regional launch, Google has worked with a range of content creators from the region to be available on YouTube Kids:
- El Schoola, an educational channel
- Learn with Zakariya
- Ahlan Simsim, the Arabic version of Sesame Street
- Emirati production Mansour
- Content for children from TV channels including Spacetoon, MBC 3, and Majid TV.
Ads on YouTube Kids
To keep the service free for use, YouTube Kids will serve ads. According to a Google spokesperson, this will cover ads that comply with the strict policies and human review guidelines. This will allow limited paid advertisements that are verified as family-friendly. All advertisements will be clearly labelled as ads. They will not include any click through to websites or product purchases.
Want to provide an ad-free experience to your child? Parents need to be paid subscribers to YouTube Premium.
With the expansion of YouTube Kids across the region, this brings the product to a total of 90 countries with the addition of Arabic language support. Since it’s also Ramadan, expect more content to be added during this auspicious time.
You can download the official app from the iOS App Store and/or Google Play store, or access it by visiting the official site.