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But disturbing videos recently found by some moms show that the social media site may not be safe for kids.
A mother in Florida said she found clips on YouTube and YouTube Kids that gave children instructions to commit suicide.
Free Hess said that the first time she had seen such a video was back in July, when another mother alerted her after she and her son were watching cartoon videos on YouTube Kids. A video of a man wearing sunglasses explained to children how to cut their wrists in the middle of one of the videos.
Hess, a pediatrician, has launched a call for action to various groups for them to report the video and remove it from the site. Hess said that it had taken a week for YouTube Kids to reduce it.
What she saw shocked her
"It makes me angry, sad and frustrated," Hess told CNN. "I am a pediatrician and I see more and more children going into self-mutilation and making suicide attempts, I have no doubt that social media and things like that contribute." "
But that's not all she said she found. When Hess went on YouTube Kids and started exploring the site, what she saw there shocked him. She said she found videos glorifying not only suicide, but also sexual exploitation and abuse, human trafficking, gun violence and domestic violence. A video, inspired by the famous video game "Minecraft", even described a shooting in a school.
"There were so many that I had to stop recording," she said.
Hess wants YouTube to do a better job filtering videos for YouTube Kids. She said she understands that Google (who owns YouTube) is a business and that they "may not have the same goals as me, but I want them to react better when people report." offensive videos, reported. "
In response to Mr. Hess's allegations, YouTube said in a statement that it was intended to make YouTube videos family-friendly and take the reactions seriously.
"We thank people who draw our attention to problematic content and allow anyone to post a video," the statement said. "Tagged videos are manually reviewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and all videos that do not belong to the app are deleted.
"We have also invested in new controls for parents, including the ability to manually select videos and channels in the app.We are constantly improving our systems and recognize that there is still work to be done. "
She says parents need to step up
Hess said YouTube makes YouTube Kids more dubious than YouTube. But she thinks that at the moment someone will report something, it could have already done some harm.
"Once someone has reported it, it's too late because a child has already seen it," she said.
Hess also wants parents to be more aware of what their kids are watching on YouTube and YouTube Kids, and that parents are doing a better job overall in technology.
"There is this gap between what children know about technology and what their parents know because parents did not grow up with it," she said. "Children are digital natives and parents are digital immigrants."
More importantly, she says, parents need to partner to fight this problem.
"We have to solve this problem," she said, "and we must all solve this problem together."
Update: This story has been modified to update the label used to describe some inappropriate footage seen in some YouTube Kids videos.
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