DECEMBER 2017 | by Manasi Kulkarni

Best Practices for Configuring

YouTube Restricted Mode

Love it or hate it you cannot avoid YouTube. If you are a school teacher, a school admin

or a parent you will be thinking about YouTube more frequently than you like. And most

often than not it will be about figuring out ways to keep inappropriate stuff away without

denying your kids the many useful videos that YouTube hosts. With a variety of ways

available to keep harmful videos at bay, it is easy to lose your way in the YouTube

labyrinth. In this paper, we will lay out some practical tips to help you manage YouTube,

Pain points

Demystifying the YouTube Restricted Mode

G-Suite App Settings for YouTube

Best Practices for YouTube Restricted Mode

Conclusion

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Over the past decade, the use of technology as an educational aid has increased

significantly. From using G-Suite (formerly known as Google Apps for Education – GAFE)

as a medium for communication and collaboration between teachers & students,

teachers & school admin, or teachers & teachers, to providing every student with a

personal device for schoolwork, or experimenting with flipped classrooms, schools have

come a long way in how they think about and impart education.

YouTube, with scores of educational videos, the ability to upload videos and maintain

dedicated channels, is used extensively by both teachers and students to supplement

learning. Today teachers can assign YouTube videos as preparatory material, just as they

would assign reading lists. Students can view these assigned videos or refer to videos by

educational sites such as the Khan Academy to help them learn better.

However, just as with any other thing on the internet, YouTube comes with its pitfalls – the

biggest of it being the free availability of inappropriate or adult videos that students can

access. Not only are pornographic videos a problem, but videos depicting violence, gun

use, suicide, or bullying also need to be monitored. Videos glorifying suicide or bullying

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and therefore provides a Restricted Mode setting that can be

configured to keep kids safe without hampering their learning

experience. However, the configuration can be rather cumbersome,

particularly when figuring out how to use them in conjunction with

web filters, G-Suite, different browsers, and devices. The Restricted

Mode is like the holy grail of using YouTube in schools and this

paper, therefore, focuses on demystifying it.

PAIN POINTS

Whitepaper on YouTube Restricted Mode

A lot of teachers complain about how videos that have been

channels become inaccessible to students in spite of having all the

right(?) configurations in place. This can be a frustrating and

demoralizing experience for both the teachers and their students.

blocked out of approved videos, both of which are detrimental to

their learning and stressful for teachers. It is recommended that

schools/ teachers reinforce the importance of responsible digital

behavior to avoid such situations.

While integrated learning and flipped classrooms are a great tool to

have, some smaller schools are unable to benefit from it

completely due to budgetary and bandwidth constraints. This is a

real problem for many schools catering to underprivileged kids for

whom schools are probably the only source of internet

connectivity. (This is a policy issue that needs to be redressed but

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There are four YouTube permission levels that can set up:

1. Strict Restricted YouTube access: This protects students from harmful/adult content

and includes keyword restrictions. This means all music videos that include above

PG-13 keywords, content, visuals etc. will be filtered out. This mode is recommended

for middle school students or even younger ones.

2. Moderate Restricted YouTube access: This mode is very similar to the strict mode

but without the keyword restrictions aspect. This mode can be recommended for an

OU that includes high school students so that you can ensure that they are not

exposed to harmful/adult content while allowing them to use YouTube for learning.

otherwise been filtered due to other criteria. Giving students the power to approve

videos can potentially lead to harmful/adult content becoming available to them.

To have these settings applied across your school you would need to configure:

1. G-Suite App settings for YouTube: This is the primary

recommended configuration and would usually take

precedence over the G-Suite User-based settings or

your web filter settings. This lets you set permission

at an OU level or assign teachers to approve videos.

This ensures that kids have access only to appropriate

videos and also lets school IT admins delegate

Settings at the User

Settings level are

turned off by selecting

the ‘No policy set’

option.

It is important to understand that the settings are applicable only when the user is

logged in using the credentials mapped with his profile in G-Suite. To filter

unauthenticated users or guests you would need to ideally have a content filter in place.

2. G- Suite User-based settings: This option allows you to set up restrictions for specific

users. However, it is not recommended to configure User-based settings as your primary

The three levels of settings work with each other to filter videos for your users according to

the restriction level you determine for them.

The ‘Apps’ menu in your G-Suite Admin Console houses the YouTube settings under

‘Additional Google Services’. The ‘Permissions’ option includes a drop-down menu with

the four settings listed earlier in this paper. Depending upon which users you are

configuring the settings for, select either Strict Restricted YouTube Access or Moderate

Restricted YouTube Access. You can choose to configure for your entire domain and it

would be inherited by all the OUs that fall within it. Or, you can do this for individual OUs.

But this is not the end of it. You would need to ‘enable’ these YouTube settings by