If you’re looking to chop your YouTube Shorts time, there’s a way to curb your doomscrolling.
On Oct. 22, YouTube announced a new setting for Shorts which lets you set a daily viewing limit. Only available on mobile, the feature ideally helps users (in particular, kids and teens) cut down on screen time. YouTube has added tools over the years including take a break and bedtime reminders as well as a sleep timer, but this one’s especially made for Shorts.
“Setting a scrolling time limit on the Shorts feed allows for this exploration while helping users be more deliberate about their viewing habits and manage their time effectively,” reads a blog post by YouTube owner Google.
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According to a 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, YouTube is still the most popular social media platform among teens ages 13 to 17, topping TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. According to the annual report, 73 percent of teens say they visit YouTube daily, with 15 percent describing their use as “almost constant.” The survey also found the majority of Americans support time limits for minors on social media, which comes as no surprise considering the ongoing legal battles facing Big Tech.
YouTube is currently facing multiple lawsuits alongside Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, over their social media platforms’ roles in the ongoing youth mental health crisis. The tech giants are accused of failing to implement protective limits for children and teens around the frequency and duration of social media use — among many other things.
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Companies including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and more have added parental monitoring tools and screen time limits for kids and teens in recent years. However, at the same time, YouTube Shorts has added longer form videos and more TikTok-like editing tools, expanding the capabilities of the site to serve up more screen time-tempting content.
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Notably, setting time limits on social media apps isn’t just for teens, with adults in just as much need to find a healthy screen time balance — if a 2025 study about toilet scrolling won’t ring the digital detox alarm for you then we don’t know what will.
How to add time limits to YouTube Shorts
According to PC Mag, the feature is currently rolling out to users but might take a little time to reach your account.
If you have the time limit tool, it will appear in YouTube’s Settings — tap your account profile picture in the bottom right of the app, then the Settings cog in the top right. It’s likely to sit in the General tab beside YouTube’s existing “take a break” and bedtime reminders.
Here, YouTube says you can set and adjust how long you’d like to scroll on the Shorts feed. Once you’ve hit that time limit, you’ll get a (notably dismissible) prompt which will pause the Shorts feed.
For parents, YouTube said it’s planning to add the Shorts time limit to the app’s parental controls to incorporate “later this year,” which will give parents and guardians controlling supervised accounts the ability to turn the setting on and make it non-dismissible.
