Made for Kids Content Creator Videos- YouTube COPPA

There is a big announcement that came from YouTube – for kids’ content creators. If you are a serious YouTube creator, then you need to take this post as very serious.

To implement kid-safe content on YouTube, they introduce this new restriction. In this post, I’m going to explain the changes made by YouTube, why it is, and who are all gonna affect by this.

What are Changes?

From Jan 1, 2020, all YouTube creators require to fill the video details with one more information. Whether the video is “made for Kids” or “not made for Kids”.

Made for Kids

In a nutshell, if the video’s primary audiences mean to children, then it’s made for kids’ content. (Example, Cartoon videos, Toys review videos and others like that).

You may ask how I know whether my video is made for kids or not? Well, check out the below factors and realize your videos comes under these sections. Also, make sure that this is not a full list to cover the video is made for kids or not.

Factors to consider the channel is Made for kids

The context of the video is directly targeting kids and they are the actual audiences.
The video includes activities that appeal to children.
Whether the video includes songs or poems for children.
If the video includes child actors or models.
In case the language of the video means for children to understand.
The video includes toys that appeal to children and also including animated/cartoon characters.

For more information and to clear doubts, click here and read the official terms by YouTube.

What happens exactly?

Google and YouTube pay $170 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for violating the COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) rule. FTC filed a complaint against YouTube for collecting personal information of children under 13 age without notifying their parents.

With this information, YouTube earned millions of dollars by delivering targeting ads to the channels. Therefore, FTC and New York Attorney General fined the amount of $136 million and $34 million respectively.

Hence, regardless of creator location, YouTube required to ask the creators to set the below settings (explained below – made for kids or not). Anyhow, the YouTube algorithm finds out the video comes under which category. But they are asking content creators co-operation too.

What is COPPA?

A law that is used to protect children under 13 age from online privacy by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). It’s really important for children’s privacy that, they don’t face any online trap.

I recommend you take a look at the detailed video explanation hereby from YouTube creators.

How can I set up and do it properly?

Either you can set these settings in channel level or video level. Once you select the option from channel level, then no need to choose in individual videos. Also, you can change the settings of a particular video and it will override the channel settings.

Channel Level

You can find this under YouTube Studio > Settings. (For the reference, check out the below image).

Video Level

You can find this option under the description part of each video before uploading it.

Note

You have to update these settings to the existing videos also. So, don’t forget to do it.

YouTube Made for Kids content consequences?

First of all, there is no need to worry if your channel content and videos come under not made for kids.

In case, you’re a made for kid’s content creator, then you have to face some serious consequences. Because YouTube will collect the minimum data from made for kid’s content creators.

Hence, YouTube states, they will remove the few features like,

Comments,
Notifications,
Info Cards,
Notification Bell,
End Screens,
Save video,
Watch later,
Save playlists,
Stories, and
Personalized ads.

The most dangerous point is the last one (Personalized ads). Because it will drastically decrease the revenue of made for kids creators from YouTube AdSense. Other than personalizing ads, contextual ads will show on the videos.

What are Personalizes Ads

YouTube collects cache details of users and shows the ads on YouTube related to it. Hence the CTR will increase automatically.

For example, my cache and recent search details are related to the book, then I came to your channel (which is about cosmetics) means, I will get an ad related to books.

What are Contextual Ads

Ads displaying related to the niche of the channel. In case, the channel niche is about Toys review, then the ads are related to toys or kids covering content.

Take away: Contextual Ads will show for all YouTube creators, only the personalized ads are going to be off for made for kid’s content creators.

What will happen if I did not mention the YouTube made for kid’s content?

If it’s so, you may end up paying $42,530 as the penalty amount.

For example, consider you’re mentioning the video is “not made for kids”. But the video content is directly related to kids. If the YouTube algorithm finds out you are mislabelling, then you have to pay the penalty of $42,530 to FTC for each video. Really this is huge!

Conclusion

If you’re not aware of these rules before, then kindly update the settings to your previous video and play the game in a safe zone. As I said before, there is no issue for “not made for kids” content creators. However, for kid’s content creators, it’s a little bad news.