We all know that YouTube is pretty cool. There are literally millions of video clips for you and your children to enjoy, whether it be TV shows, music videos, home movies, tutorials for pretty much everything, video game walkthroughs or even full length movies. You will find it all on YouTube with one quick search.
Although in the past my children have looked at YouTube with me, my 7 year old son recently started wanting to use it independently as enjoys looking at video game walkthroughs related to his PS3 games. There was of course a problem with this. Viewing YouTube unchaperoned could lead to him discovering a whole world of inappropriate and uncensored material, should his curious little fingers start exploring ‘related’ clip upon ‘related’ clip.
So what to do? Well after some research, I discovered a fantastic app – iTubeList for kids. A brilliant app that lets your have complete control of what your children watch on YouTube. But first, there are things you can do to completely safety proof your iPad first…
Safeguarding your Children
There are a number of ways you can help safeguard your children against inappropriate material on YouTube. Firstly you can begin by activating the Safety Mode which helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer your children not to see. This not fool proof though and doesn’t necessarily protect against things like bad language.
If your children are able to access YouTube directly on your iPad, you will probably need to remove the YouTube app if you have it already on your desktop and replace it instead with the iTubeList app, to help avoid temptation!
If you want complete confidence your child is safe from accessing the internet while unattended, then you can also hide the Safari icon from the iPad desktop.
You do this by going into Settings>General>Restrictions. Enter your passcode and slide the Safari button from green to white. By doing this the Safari icon will disappear off your desktop and your child will be unable to access the internet. You can simply unhide it once it is no longer in their possession by sliding the Safari button back to green.
How to use iTube List
Once you’ve downloaded the iTube List app, you can start adding child friendly content for your child to watch. You will need to have an internet connection for your child to view the videos as they do not store directly onto your device but stream directly from the internet. You will be asked to set up a passcode (used to prevent children searching content freely).
- Begin by tapping on the magnifying glass search button in the top right hand corner.
- Enter your passcode.
- Type into the search bar at the top what you want to download (i.e. Peppa Pig).
- The app will search YouTube and find you all content under your search request (exactly the same as in YouTube itself). It groups the content found into episodes (click image below for larger view). You can select which episodes you wish to download and tap the + symbol to add the playlist to your iTubeList homepage.
- Click the back button (top left) to return to the homepage and locate the episodes you have downloaded (note: My only criticism is there doesn’t seem to be any order on the homepage which is annoying as would have made sense to list either alphabetically or by latest download. So you will need to search for the latest download amongst the others on the homepage!).
- Once located, click on the downloaded episodes and select a specific episode to watch. It should then switch to full screen after the video starts playing.
Tips
- If you click on the first image above, you will notice in the top yellow search bar a ‘star’ icon. This displays the top 50 kids programme downloads to get you started and as they are kid friendly they don’t require a passcode!
- Click the star and choose your episodes. There is a calendar icon at the top where you can select top downloads for the day, week or month.
- You will also notice a cog icon (last icon in the yellow bar) on the homepage. Click on this to access Channels, Settings and Background. Here you can delete any playlists you no longer want, play with the settings or change the homepage background.
Now you’re all set, you can let your children watch YouTube videos with complete confidence that they are safely watching age appropriate content without you having to babysit them! Brilliant!
