Some children use their parent’s YouTube account to watch videos Thanasis Zovoilis/Getty

Young YouTube viewers stand an alarmingly high chance of stumbling across disturbing videos. There is a 45 per cent probability of them reaching inappropriate content within 10 clicks of a first, child-oriented YouTube video.

“It’s shocking, and confirms what every parent experiences when their kids watch YouTube,” says Michael Sirivianos at Cyprus University of Technology.

Sirivianos and his colleagues analysed more than 130,000 videos targeted at children aged between 1 and 5. The titles of the chosen videos contained keywords likely to appeal to young …