YouTube wants teens to see less content about weight and fitness

The Alphabet-owned video giant YouTube has looked into how content consumed on the platform impacts teens and decided it would limit recommendations for certain types of content.

The video platform rolled out a new set of safeguards for content recommendations for teens, with the aim of reducing teen exposure to topics that may impact how teens and tweens identify themselves.

YouTube, together with its Youth and Families Advisory Committee, which is made up of independent experts, decided that such content includes videos that “compare physical features and idealize some types over others, idealize specific fitness levels or body weights, or display social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation.”

The decision means that recommendations for content falling under these categories will now be limited for teens. The Advisory Committee’s Allison Briscoe-Smith, a clinician and researcher, explained that teens are more likely to form negative beliefs about themselves when seeing repeated messages about idealized standards.

“A higher frequency of content that idealizes unhealthy standards or behaviors can emphasize potentially problematic messages – and those messages can impact how some teens see themselves. Guardrails can help teens maintain healthy patterns as they naturally compare themselves to others and size up how they want to show up in the world,” Briscoe-Smith said.

A month earlier, the Financial Times revealed that Meta and Google ran a now-canceled secret campaign on YouTube that deliberately targeted teenagers with Instagram ads. Documents suggested that Google worked on a marketing project for Meta, designed to target 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with ads promoting Instagram.

Meanwhile, a 2023 report showed that advertisers are still tracking viewers of YouTube videos made for kids, even though the video platform promised to stop delivering personalized ads on these types of content.