Why Filtering YouTube Is so Complicated: Blocking Distractions While Keeping Educational Content
- Kevin Kuckkan, M.Ed.
- Nov 11, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Oct 5, 2025
In the post-COVID era, K12 education relies heavily on various forms of YouTube videos to teach students. But with YouTube open, students also get access to inappropriate or otherwise mindless, non-educational content during school hours. It's becoming commonplace.
In this article, we'll highlight the four reasons YouTube filtering is so complicated, followed by what your school's internet filtering software can do to filter YouTube for your students successfully.
4 Reasons Why Filtering YouTube Is so Complicated
Admittedly, YouTube poses challenges for legacy filtering technology. With 30,000 hours of new content uploaded to YouTube every hour, the amount of new content is staggering. And this poses challenges for legacy filters. What content should schools block online?
1) Dynamic content dominates YouTube
Legacy filtering systems simply weren't designed to filter the dynamic content that comprises most of YouTube today. You may think your students are adequately protected, but the filtering safety net you have in place may be leaving your students (and district) vulnerable.
2) YouTube contains both helpful & distracting videos
Many schools can't just block YouTube entirely. Many Teachers need access to youtube videos, especially when sharing these videos to students during class. But this also lets in distracting content. Sadly, classroom content filtering systems cannot decipher nuances between what is and what isn't distracting.
These factors lead to an endless battle of manually adding URLs to blocklists
3) Youtube's native filtering features are limited
Even when K12 ITs turn on YouTube's Safe Mode, YouTube’s content moderation has some large gaps in effectiveness. For example, when blocking music videos, can we block racy music videos but leave others? Or must we block music videos altogether? YouTube doesn't allow nuance within a single video category.
4) One video having both educational & inappropriate moments
Let's go back to the music video example. Live performances tend to be reasonably acceptable, with music taking center stage. Yet many studio-produced music videos run risqué in some moments, and attract LARGE audiences of adolescent and teen viewers, presenting yet another opportunity for kids to see obscene content.
For legacy filters, the ability to blur select parts of a video is simply impossible. For a K12 IT director, it’s simply one more blip on your already crowded radar.
Why K12 Schools Are Switching to Real-time Content Filtering
Unlike legacy filters using blocklists, browser-level AI filtering analyzes each page in real time. Deledao's ActiveScan™, for instance, uses patented InstantAI™ to analyze YouTube videos in real time. It detects inappropriate moments down to the frame.
Frame by frame blurring and muting the video until the inappropriate scene has passed.
In addition to state-of-the-art filtering technology measures, Deledao Education provides an additional layer of protection to further ensure students won’t have access to inappropriate music video content.
Use Case: Blocking a Music Video
Let’s say your school district decides to block a Nicki Minaj YouTube video that’s unsuitable for students. However, you’d also like to establish a blanket policy for future Nicki Minaj videos, so you don’t need to constantly update the policy settings later.
How Deledao's customizable filter solves the problem
Deledao's ActiveInstruct Classroom management makes this simple. In policy settings, choose which YouTube videos to block or allow.
You can filter by channel, category, and keywords. A few simple clicks on the Administrative Console and students are protected.
Block by individual video
Block by YouTube channel
Block by category
Block by videos that contain selected keywords in the title or description
Choose the best school internet filtering software for your students
With the dynamic internet of today in mind, Deledao's filtering technology is specifically designed to help K12 ITs manage social media and similar user-generated content. With the added safeguard of real time AI, Deledao provides a complete solution that will keep your students safe and protected from inappropriate content.
