Yandex details child protection measures in its services: 2 million child accounts, AI monitoring

Yandex published its annual report on child safety in its services, noting that by the end of Q1 2026, the number of child accounts in Yandex ID surpassed 2 million, a 15% increase year-on-year. Users of child accounts made 168 million search queries in 2025 and 107.7 million in Q1 2026. The main protection tool is the child account, which automatically limits access to unwanted content across Search, Browser, Yandex Music, Kinopoisk, Yandex Books, and Yandex Stations. A 'Family Mode' in Yandex Search filters inappropriate content even without logging into a child account, and was enabled by 3.2 million unique users in Q1 2026. Over a third of Yandex Station owners use parental control settings, and with child voice recognition, Alisa automatically switches to a child mode with strict filtering. A child mode was also added to the image generation service 'Shedevrum' in 2025, prohibiting adult content. AI technologies are used to check content: in Yandex Music, each new track is first analyzed by machine learning algorithms, then reviewed by moderators. From October 2025 to March 2026, over 78,000 tracks and podcast episodes were marked with warnings for explicit language or violence. Yandex also participated in educational projects: over 2.6 million schoolchildren completed the 'Lesson of Digital' on neural networks and internet safety, and a free 'Internet Safety' course for elementary grades added lessons on deepfakes and online game fraud, with 43.7 thousand children completing it by end of 2025 and 14.7 thousand in Q1 2026. Additionally, Yandex Taxi invested 200 million rubles in the 'Detskiy' tariff for child car seats and driver training, and Yandex Maps and Navigator marked over 50,000 road sections near schools, warning drivers to slow down.