If you aim to lessen your time spent on YouTube Shorts, there’s a method to limit your doomscrolling. On Oct. 22, YouTube unveiled a fresh setting for Shorts that enables you to establish a daily viewing cap. This feature, available solely on mobile, is crafted to assist users, especially children and teens, in minimizing screen time. Over the years, YouTube has introduced various tools such as break reminders and bedtime alerts, along with a sleep timer, but this particular feature is tailored specifically for Shorts.
“Implementing a scrolling time constraint on the Shorts feed facilitates exploration while encouraging users to be more intentional about their viewing patterns and manage their time efficiently,” states a blog entry by YouTube’s parent company, Google.
A 2024 survey from the Pew Research Center indicates that YouTube is the leading social media platform among adolescents aged 13 to 17, outpacing TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. The findings reveal that 73 percent of teens engage with YouTube daily, with 15 percent characterizing their usage as “almost constant.” The survey also indicates that most Americans support imposing time restrictions for minors on social media, which is expected given the continuous legal challenges confronting Big Tech.
YouTube is currently embroiled in multiple lawsuits along with Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat regarding their social media services’ contributions to the ongoing youth mental health crisis. The tech giants face accusations of neglecting to enforce protective constraints for children and teens regarding the frequency and duration of social media interactions, among other issues.
In recent years, platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and others have implemented parental oversight tools and screen time limits for younger users. Nevertheless, concurrently, YouTube Shorts has integrated longer-form videos and additional TikTok-like editing features, increasing the platform’s ability to present more content that tempts users to spend additional screen time.
Importantly, establishing time limits on social media applications isn’t exclusive to teens, as adults equally need to achieve a healthy balance regarding screen time — if a 2025 study on toilet scrolling doesn’t prompt you to consider a digital detox, then we’re not sure what will.
How to set time limits on YouTube Shorts
As per PC Mag, this feature is currently being rolled out to users but may take some time to appear on your account.
If you possess the time limit feature, it will be found in YouTube’s Settings — tap on your account profile icon located in the bottom right corner of the app, followed by the Settings gear in the top right. It will likely be located under the General tab, near YouTube’s existing “take a break” and bedtime reminder options.
Within this section, YouTube states you can set and modify the duration you wish to scroll through the Shorts feed. Once you reach that time limit, you’ll receive a (notably dismissible) notification that will pause the Shorts feed.
For parents, YouTube indicated that it intends to incorporate the Shorts time limit into the app’s parental controls “later this year,” allowing parents and guardians managing supervised accounts to enable the setting and render it non-dismissible.