YouTube Kids: A family-friendly app to explore great Arabic content

As a father of two children, I know how unique every family and child are. Yet what is common among all parents is how important it is to help our children to explore the world around them safely. This is why I’m excited to share the launch of YouTube Kids across 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, including Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon. 

YouTube Kids is a family-friendly stand-alone streaming video service that was built with parents and children under 13 in mind. We’ve built the YouTube Kids app to be a family-friendly place for kids to explore their imagination and curiosity. To do this, we worked with a range of content creators from the region, from El Schoola, an educational channel to Ahlan Simsim the Arabic version of Sesame Street, to bring families better and more diverse Arabic content as well as international content.

However, we know that every family has their own unique interests and values. To help parents, YouTube Kids has a wide range of parental controls so that they can customize their children’s  viewing experience based on what works best for their family. Here are some of the parental control features available on YouTube Kids: 

• Choose age appropriate content levels:  Parents can create upto 8 profiles so they can take into consideration 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. 
• Built in timer: Set the integrated timer and let YouTube Kids tell your kids it’s time to get off the app with a friendly “Time’s up” notification.

Parents can also easily report and flag videos to help us to improve the platform.

The YouTube Kids app will be available on the Google Play Store and the App Store and works on both phones as well as tablets. You can also access YouTube Kids using your browser by visiting youtubekids.com.