My two oldest kids ( 11 and 8 ) are pretty intensive computer users, for both school and, to a lesser extent, fun.  They have a shared computer, here in my study.  Sometimes you can find them working away on their homework while I’m writing these exciting blog posts.

I use- and recommend- Windows Live Family Safety to control what they access on their computer.  It’s a good program, that does much of what I want it to do.  But there are holes to plug and redundancy is a good thing where my kids’ eyes and ears are concerned.

YouTube is one of their favorite web sites, and I have given access to it via Windows Live Family Safety.  But I want them to be able to see the things they should see there, without seeing the things they shouldn’t.  This has been a bit of a challenge, so I was happy to read today that YouTube has added parental controls.

If you want to control your or your kids’ YouTube experience, you can now do so via an opt-in feature known as Safety Mode (not to be confused with Safety Dance).

Let’s take a quick song break to dance around for a moment. . .

OK, back to YouTube.

The problem with YouTube’s implementation of these controls is that each YouTube user has to opt-in to Safety Mode separately.  Which means (from the FAQ):

Q: My kids and I each have separate profiles on our family computer. Do I have to log in to the same browser on each profile to lock strict filtering on each profile?
A: Yes, each profile operates independently, so you would have to lock your preference on each browser on each separate profile.

There are a heap of problems with that, but I’ll pick three.  One, I have to log in to each of my kid’s computer accounts on every applicable computer (they have accounts on one of my laptops and the rarely-used Netbook), and enable Safety Mode.  Two, none of my kids have YouTube accounts, so I guess I log in as me from their computer account and enable this feature.  Three, it will take any kid who’s smart enough to use a computer about 30 seconds to disable this restriction.  Surely there’s an better way.

Let’s give it a try anyway.

After clicking over to YouTube and logging into my account, I see a recommendation of The Bangles doing one of the best songs ever.  Maybe it’s the fact that I’m hearing a great Big Star song without Alex Chilton, but, so far this feature seems a little half-baked.

So let’s take a better song break, shall we?

At the bottom of a YouTube page, you’ll see a link to enable Safety Mode.

You can lock Safety Mode if you are signed into your account (from the FAQ):

Locked Safety Mode:

• Sign In to your YouTube account
• Click Safety Mode at the bottom of every page to open the preference setting
• Click On and Save and Lock to opt-in and lock this browser
• You are now in Locked Safety Mode!
  To opt out open preferences and Click Unlock Safety Mode.
  Enter your YouTube password to unlock Safety Mode.

This all seems like a lot of work to put a system in place on lots of accounts on lots of computers, which could be easily disabled.  I guess it’s better than nothing, but content filtering and parental controls could be addressed in a much more effective, easier way.

Note that Safety Mode is being rolled out gradually, so it may not be available to everyone yet.  In the meantime Read/WriteWeb has a detailed look at the feature, and its shortcomings.