Kids’ developing funnybones make them an eager audience for silly videos: A dog riding a skateboard or two guys lip-synching a song about e-Bay can elicit endless laughs. For such entertainment, we can thank YouTube. But this weekend, a friend related a story about her 10-year-old searching YouTube for “spin the bottle” and finding X-rated material that came up. I thought our family was well-protected by our parental controls, but I hadn’t before considered user-generated-content sites and unexpected consequences of well-intentioned searches.

YouTube does not have a “safe search” option, as other sites like Google and Flikr do. YouTube does have a policy that prohibits content with nudity or violence, but their policing system is community-based. That means that if you see something inappropriate, you can (and should) flag it by clicking on the little flag icon, and filling out the form that then comes up. YouTube’s staff will review the video, and if they deem it inappropriate for family viewing, they will restrict access to those 18 or older. I suspect the system works pretty well because the YouTube community is so large. But it’s not fool-proof – when I did my own search, I did find one spin-the-bottle video with lewd comments, though no nudity, and recently-posted material may not yet have been flagged.

Next week, I will post a roundup of the most popular parental control programs and their benefits. But for now, you can bet I’ll be hovering a bit closer as my kids wend their way through their online worlds.