The new accounts are designed for parents who believe their children are ready to use the main YouTube platform but still want to supervise their viewing experience through age-appropriate content settings, privacy protections, and wellbeing tools.
The rollout will gradually cover the MENA region and Türkiye starting 2 July, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Iraq.
Supervised kid accounts offer three content settings for parents: Explore, which includes educational videos, tutorials, arts and crafts, and dance; Explore More, which also includes gaming and live streams; and Most of YouTube, which gives access to nearly all YouTube videos except content rated 18+ or deemed inappropriate for supervised accounts.
The accounts also include what YouTube described as an industry-first Shorts feed timer, allowing parents to set daily limits on YouTube Shorts scrolling. Parents can set the timer to zero to turn off short-form scrolling entirely, such as during exam periods.
Other built-in protections include “Take a Break” and “Bedtime” reminders, which are enabled by default for users under 18. The accounts also disable several standard YouTube features, including content creation and commenting, while personalized ad targeting is not allowed and autoplay is switched off by default.
The supervised kid accounts join YouTube’s supervised teen accounts, already available across the region.
Teen accounts allow young users to access most of YouTube while enabling parents to link accounts, receive email notifications when a teenager uploads a video or starts a livestream, and view shared insights into channel activity.
“YouTube has been a huge part of families’ lives across this region for over 20 years, whether to help with homework or as a shared viewing experience on the family TV, which is why we’re continuously investing in tools that serve families and put their wellness first,” said Javid Aslanov, Head of YouTube Middle East and North Africa.
YouTube said the new accounts form part of its broader family-safety measures, which include YouTube Kids, a standalone app offering a curated library of age-appropriate videos, and Google Family Link, which allows parents to manage app usage, set content filters, and track the location of a child’s Android phone.
Parents can set up supervised kid accounts through the Family Center in the YouTube app or on the YouTube website, or through the Google Family Link app.
The rollout comes amid growing scrutiny in Egypt and the wider region over children’s exposure to social media, short-form video, livestreaming, and algorithm-driven content.
It also coincides with TikTok revealing the removal of more than 2.38 million videos in Egypt during the fourth quarter of 2025 for violating its Community Guidelines, ranking Egypt third among five Arab markets covered in the platform’s latest enforcement report.
TikTok said 99.9 percent of violating content in Egypt was detected and removed proactively, while 98.4 percent was taken down within 24 hours of being reported.
The figures followed an earlier TikTok transparency update showing nearly 3 million videos taken down in Egypt between April and June 2025 as part of a wider regional enforcement drive that removed nearly 19 million videos across MENA.
Child online safety has also moved higher on Egypt’s public-policy agenda.
In February, Egypt launched its first Child Internet Risk Index, which measured online safety among children aged 5–12 across safe digital use, parental supervision, protection from digital risks, and awareness and institutional support.
The index found that 48.5 percent of surveyed households said children in this age group spend less than two hours online daily, while 30.2 percent reported between two and four hours.
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