Maybe this is intended to prevent "YouTube babysitting" aka "make a long playlist, park kid in front of youtube, go and do something else"? Without the ability

Maybe this is intended to prevent "YouTube babysitting" aka "make a long playlist, park kid in front of youtube, go and do something else"? Without the ability to schedule up hours of content, one is forced to look after the child regularly, even if it's just to start the next dull bit of entertainment. Though if that was the motivation I'd expect them to also disable auto-play of next video for content targeted at kids.