How Filter Explicit Content on YouTube

YouTube is a fantastic site for the sharing of both funny and informative videos. For the most part, adult content is removed pretty quickly once reported but some can still slip through the cracks. There’s also a number on 18+ rated videos that, while they don’t contain nudity, you wouldn’t want your child watching.

Let’s have a look at turning on and locking safe search on YouTube, which also locks safe search on Google as a whole.

As you can see above, a search for playboy.com returns videos of images that you wouldn’t want your child to see. Scroll to the bottom of the page, and you will see “Safety” is set to “Off”. To turn it on, click on it.

This screen will appear. Click “ON” and then click “SAVE”. When you hit refresh, the filter will activate, and Playboy.com returns perhaps the exact opposite type of search result you would expect.

Now, the problem here is that your child can very easily reverse this by simply doing the opposite of what you just did. If you wish to lock the safety filter, scroll back down to the bottom of the page.

First you’ll have to sign in. Click sign in, and you will be greeted by the sign in screen. Once you’ve entered your log in details, you will return to the previous page, except now it will look like this.

Click ON then click SAVE. You will have to enter your password again.

Once you’ve entered your password and clicked Sign in, flagged videos will be blocked and Google safe search will be locked on the browser you activated it on. This is unaffected by people signing in to a different Google account – if you want to unlock it on your browser, you have to unlock it using the account you used to turn It on.

And there you have it. Happy browsing!

About the author Evan Mangan

Evan is a digital marketing lecturer and trainer and also delivers digital parenting workshops throughout Ireland for schools and parent groups. He developed his digital media expertise in London where he was Head of European Marketing for Yahoo! Mobile, Head of Customer and New Media marketing at Orange and Head of Direct Marketing at BT. He has extensive experience of digital marketing across web and mobile covering the Irish, UK and European markets Evan is the founder of The Digital Parenting Academy and www.digitalparenting.ie