YouTube Applies Minimum Age Restriction of 16 Years, What is the Fate of YouTube Kids?
JAKARTA - The Ministry of Communication and Digital together with YouTube Indonesia ensure that the YouTube Kids application is not affected by the policy of limiting the minimum age of 16 years which will be applied to the main YouTube platform.
The policy is part of Google's latest commitment to comply with the Government Regulation on Child Protection in the Digital Space or PP TUNAS.
Head of Government Relations and Public Policy, YouTube Asia Pacific, Danny Ardianto, explained that YouTube Kids is part of the YouTube ecosystem, but is presented as a separate application that is specifically designed for children.
So, even though YouTube Kids can still be accessed by children without requiring an account, YouTube still implements a self-verification mechanism when children want to watch its content.
One of them is through simple questions such as multiplication to ensure that users are actually children before accessing the show. With this mechanism, even if it can be accessed without an account, the content displayed on YouTube Kids is still tailored specifically for children.
"So if it's for YouTube Kids, it's actually part of the YouTube ecosystem, but it's also a separate app and its user's purpose and doesn't even require an account, so it's different from what's in the main YouTube app," said Danny in a press conference on Wednesday, April 22.
Meanwhile, Minister of Communication and Information Meutya Hafid emphasized that the policy of limiting the minimum age of 16 years only applies to the main YouTube application, not YouTube Kids. According to him, the separation of the application makes the supervision mechanism on YouTube Kids different from other platforms that are integrated into one service.
"This is because the application is completely separate. It's different from other platforms whose applications are one unit or one part, so that supervision is easier. So what we impose is the YouTube, not to YouTube Kids," concluded Meutya.