YouTube extends limits to body weight and fitness videos for teens in Europe and UK

In an effort to curb teens from watching potentially harmful videos on YouTube, the streaming platform announced Thursday it will expand its limitation of repeated recommendations of videos that idealise specific body weights, types, and fitness levels for teenagers in Europe and the UK.

It’s an extension of the same move by YouTube in 2023 for U.S. teens, with the company’s latest blog post using identical language as its first announcement, just extending the geographical reach.

As it has done for U.S. teens, YouTube said it will limit repeated recommendations of videos in particular categories including “content that compares physical features and idealizes some types over others, idealizes specific fitness levels or body weights, or displays social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation.”

YouTube has identified these content categories as the type “that may be innocuous as a single video, but could be problematic for some teens if viewed repetitively.”

The post was written by Dr. Garth Graham, director and head of YouTube Health and James Beser, director of product management, YouTube Youth. The recommendations came from YouTube’s youth and families advisory committee, a group formed in 2018, made up of independent experts in children’s media, digital learning, and development. Their role is to advise on issues like online content and its impact on teens, who remain heavy social media users, especially on YouTube.

“One insight [of the advisory committee] is that teens are more likely than adults to form negative beliefs about themselves when seeing repeated messages about ideal standards in content they consume online,” Graham and Beser wrote.

A 2019 survey by the UK’s Mental Health Foundation found that 37 percent of teens felt “upset” and 31 percent felt “ashamed” about their body image. The report also said four in 10 teenagers said images on social media had caused them to worry about body image. A 2022 report by the UK Parliament’s Health and Social Care Committee also unpacked the many avenues that contribute to body image issues, including online spaces. “The advent of social media and rise in online advertising have both increased exposure to certain idealised body types,” the report found.

YouTube will add these limitations for recommended videos on top of its existing means of restricting certain content from teen viewers per YouTube’s Community Guidelines, including videos sharing personal testimonials about eating disorders. A study by UK eating disorder charity Beat found that 91 percent of people who had experienced eating disorders had encountered “content which was harmful in the context of their eating disorder,” adding, “People with lived experience of eating disorders described being ‘bombarded’ with triggering content, imagery and advertisements which could ‘fuel’ eating disorder thoughts and behaviours.”

“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,” Clinician, researcher, and YouTube advisory committee member Allison Briscoe-Smith said in a statement. “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.”

Though it’s not specified by YouTube as being in compliance, the company’s extended guardrails are being announced not long after the implementation of Europe’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Act that requires tech and social media companies protect users’ safety on their platforms and prevent children from accessing harmful and age-inappropriate content.

For more on teens’ and children’s safety online, Mashable has you covered.

If you feel like you’d like to talk to someone about your eating behavior, text “NEDA” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected with a trained volunteer or visit the National Eating Disorder Association website for more information.