We’re also supporting the WHO and the British Medical Journal in hosting a round table of experts to develop guiding principles on defining developmentally appropriate mental health content for teens and examining strategies for communicating mental health resources and information to teens online. The meeting and resulting report aims to provide information that will help creators and services better develop age-appropriate mental health resources, as well as provide tips for families, educators, and other caregivers to identify enriching mental health content. The BMJ will publish a meeting full report in early 2024.

All of this work is underpinned by a set of five principles that we adhere to when building services and features for kids and teens, which you can read about here. We aim to build great experiences for young people, which is why their privacy, safety, wellbeing and mental health is at the core of our service and policy development.

Many of us at YouTube working on these initiatives are parents ourselves, and we’re uniquely aware of the choices families face when it comes to ensuring the wellbeing of loved ones and setting digital ground rules. Our goal is to provide parents with kids at every stage with the confidence to let their children and teens explore their interests and the tools that empower families to customize their experiences across YouTube. Our youth product experiences now reach more than 100 million active viewers every month, and we want to ensure that we’re making changes to our products thoughtfully, bringing parents and experts along each step of the way.

We’re excited to build on our important work related to youth experiences, digital wellbeing, and mental health, with more to come in the future. We recognize the important role that YouTube can play in the life of teens and are deeply committed to ensuring time on YouTube is time well spent.