Virgin Media adds YouTube Kids

Liberty Global-owned UK operator Virgin Media has added the YouTube Kids app to its TV platform.

YouTube Kidis is designed to provide a safe place for children to explore their interests and curiosity through online video.

The app, which is available to all Virgin Media customers with a V6 set top box, allows parents to customise the experience to suit their children’s needs and preferences.

This includes different content settings for pre-schoolers, younger, or older kids, and the ability to block unsuitable content.

Parents can also choose to select content to make available to their kids.

David Bouchier, chief digital entertainment officer at Virgin Media, said: “It’s great to add another hugely popular app to our TV platform with YouTube Kids joining our roster of entertainment apps. YouTube Kids provides parents with greater confidence and control of the things that their children watch. This brings more age-appropriate content to our platform for our younger viewers and adds to our already mega kids offer of popular channels and 1000’s of episodes of on-demand shows.”

Virgin Media recently unveiled statistics revealing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on TV viewing habits that among other things showed that viewers spent five hours more on average during April watching pay TV kids channels such as Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network compared to February.

Overall, pay kids TV channels saw a 19% increase in viewing time during early lockdown.

The YouTube app was also accessed by 16% more users and overall viewing time increased by 37%.