Youtube Kids App Shows Sex, Drugs & Profanity to Children; How to Disable Search?

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Child advocacy groups have filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission against the YouTube kids app launched several months ago. 

According to Tech Crunch, this is the second time that a complaint was filed against the app, both times concerning the adult content featured on it.

The groups that filed the complaint twice are the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) and the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). 

Both groups stated in the complaint that the YouTube app included videos and ads containing: sexual references, alcohol and drug use, child abuse;,unsafe behaviors like playing with matches and other inappropriate content for children.  

Besides filing a complaint, CDD and CCFC released a statement, saying: "Google is deceiving parents by marketing YouTube Kids as a safe place for children under five to explore when, in reality the app is rife with videos that would not meet anyone's definition of 'family friendly.'"  

USA Today has learned that the app was launched in February 2015 for both iOS and Android platforms. The YouTube kids app reportedly "features short videos that are algorithmically filtered for child-friendliness."

Google maintained that there is a team of people manually sampling each of the videos that are included in the app, ensuring they are all child-appropriate.  

Tech Times explains that the main problem with the app is that new videos are continuously uploaded into it, and these videos can be accessed through the search function. Hence, the new videos that are actually child-inappropriate can be viewed by kid users. 

However, Google refuted that it is actually very difficult to constantly monitor the content of the site becaue over "300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute."

The tech giant now suggests disabling the search function of the app, thereby limiting access to videos that have already been screened by YouTube and labeled "kid friendly."

The iPad Guide website explains how to turn off the search function on the YouTube kids app on all Apple products. Below are the directions:  

1. Tap the lock icon on the bottom right hand of your display. 
2. Enter the numbers shown on the "Grown-Ups Only" screen. 
3. Tap Settings. 
4. Tap the Search slide under "Content Controls" so it is OFF / White. 

Meanwhile, Tech Crunch suggests removing the search function on YouTube Kids to ensure that children will not have access to inappropriate content.