I prefer to impose stricter restrictions than follow my children around the house peering over their shoulder to see what they are watching on the iPad. Unlike a desktop or laptop, which is easy to see even from across the room, a mobile device can be propped up in a lap and easily hidden from your view.
You can turn on YouTube Safe Search in mobile Safari or in the YouTube app to prevent access to provocative content, but I would rather have precise control over the videos that my kids watch on iOS. Filtering on iOSĪ growing number of kids are watching videos using an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod touch, and as expected, most of the parental controls you use on the desktop don't extend to mobile. You have control over the categories of content that they want to block. OpenDNS routes all your internet traffic through its server and filters that traffic for adult content, social networking sites, video sharing sites and more. Parents looking for a house-wide filtering solution that works with all devices should look at OpenDNS and its parental control service. If you use Safari, parents can use the built-in filtering feature that is enabled when you turn on parental controls in OS X. There are browser-based extensions like FoxFilter for FireFox or Blocksi for Chrome that also filter website content. These services cost money, but they filter all the websites that your children visit, not just YouTube.
If you want an extra layer of security, you can install third-party filtering tools like Safe Eyes from McAfee or Net Nanny. YouTube warns parents that this feature is not 100 percent foolproof, and some objectionable content could seep through its filters. If you have multiple browsers, you have to open each browser and repeat this process to make sure Safety Mode is turned on in each one. If you are logged into your YouTube account, you can lock this feature so it is always enabled. You can turn on Safety Mode by scrolling to the bottom of any YouTube page and clicking the drop-down menu in the "Safety" section. Safety Mode will screen out potentially objectionable content, so children can view YouTube in a web browser without unsavory videos and vulgar comments floating to the top. The quickest and easiest way to make YouTube kid-friendly is to enable Safety Mode. You can disable notifications at any time in your settings menu.