How we’re helping kids and families safely learn, grow and play online
We’ve long enabled parents to supervise their children’s activity online with the ability to set screen time limits for each device or for specific apps, set content restrictions and manage app data permissions. Recently, we introduced additional tools and features that offer even more support across our products.
This October, on Family Link, we introduced “Today Only” screen time settings that override general settings for one day, like when taking a family road trip. We’ve also expanded the Location tab where parents can see all of their children on the same map with their device location. Now, parents can also turn on notifications to be alerted when their child arrives at or leaves a specific destination like school or sports practice.
Across Google TV and Assistant, we announced several new features, including parent-managed watchlists on kids profiles on Google TV, where parents can create a “must-watch” list for their kids so that the next time they are watching TV, the watchlist will automatically populate on their profile’s home screen. Similarly, when using Assistant, parents can modify media settings to enable or disable certain functionality like phone calls, set up downtime for their kids and choose the music and video providers (like YouTube and YouTube Kids) they can access. Kids will only be able to explore content from those pre-selected providers.