American tech company Google has announced a slew of new features designed to “give kids and teens a safer online experience.”
According to Mashable India, the search giant will soon roll out a new policy that enables anyone under the age of 18, including their parents and guardians, to request that their image be removed from Google Image search results.
Google already offers the ability for users to request that their personal information, including images, be removed from search results. However, such removal requests must fit into specific takedown categories such as “non-consensual explicit imagery” or “doxxing content”.
Google’s new policy appears to streamline the process for teenagers and allow removal requests for images of any users under 18.
As Google points out in its announcement, this won’t remove the images from the Internet. But, without the most popular search engine in the world serving it up in the search results, it certainly will be much less visible.
In addition to the announcement, the company introduced other updates to safeguard young people on the internet. Most of these other policy changes regard default settings on accounts belonging to those under 18. For example, on YouTube, new videos will default to the private upload settings for teens.
Google will also be rolling out features from Family Link to users under 18, as well. The Family Link is a Google service that allows parents of children under 13, who cannot yet have their own Google accounts, to monitor their usage. SafeSearch, which automatically filters out explicit search results for Family Link users, will now be turned on by default for users under the age of 18.