We’ve all experienced it—opening a seemingly harmless YouTube Short, only to lose track of time and end up scrolling for an hour through videos that might not even interest us. To help manage this, YouTube has introduced a new timer feature that lets users set a daily limit on how long they can watch Shorts on the mobile app. Once this limit is reached, a dismissible prompt pauses further scrolling for the day.
Currently, this timer isn’t connected to YouTube’s parental controls, so parents cannot yet restrict their children’s Shorts viewing time. However, YouTube plans to integrate this feature into parental controls later this year, allowing parents to set non-dismissible limits on Shorts viewing for kids.
Endless scrolling on social media has been linked to negative mental health effects, like distraction and increased anxiety, as it rewires the brain to crave constant new content.
YouTube has also introduced other tools to reduce excessive viewing, such as the “Take a Break” reminder, which notifies users after set intervals, and the bedtime reminder, which encourages users to stop watching and sleep—though users can always choose to ignore these alerts.
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