A lot of parents have a love-hate relationship with YouTube: on the one hand, there are countless educational and entertaining clips for children, but on the other, there is just as much inappropriate content, if not more.  The issue is that it is all too easy to stumble upon something you’d rather not have seen, whether you’re an adult or not.

Google engineers are doing their best to help out, and have developed an app called YouTube Kids.  The group manager on the product, Shimrit Ben-Yair, realized that family-friendly content was a hot commodity on the video site, and hopes to capitalize on that and help some parents out at the same time.

“Parents were constantly asking us, can you make YouTube a better place for our kids.  [Year after year] we’ve seen 50% growth in viewing time on YouTube, but for our family entertainment channels, it’s more like 200%.”

The project has been underway for months, and will boast a simple, easy-to-use interface, as well as parental controls, like a timer that shuts the app down after a predetermined amount of time.  The overall design is big and bright, to make it easier for kids to navigate on their own.

Source: USA Today