YouTube adds new parental controls for Shorts

On Wednesday, YouTube announced the implementation of additional parental controls, particularly around the amount of time children and teens spend watching YouTube Shorts. The Google-owned platform is introducing these tools to allow parents to manage their children’s connected accounts, helping to limit the potential for users to spend excessive time scrolling through short-form videos. The update comes as the online safety of minors continues to be a hot topic internationally.

The new suite of controls includes:

• Timers: Parents can set a timer for how much time children’s connected accounts can spend watching Shorts. This feature allows parents to establish limits on short-form video consumption, helping to manage screen time on the platform.
• Blocking: Parents can block accounts from watching Shorts permanently or temporarily. This gives parents the ability to restrict access to the feature entirely, or suspend it temporarily, such as when a child is using the platform to watch educational content.
• Reminders: YouTube will allow parents to set custom Bedtime and Take a Break reminders. These settings can be adjusted to prompt children to pause their viewing, building on existing reminders that are also available for adult users to manage their own screen time.

For parents who share devices with their children, navigating back and forth between different profiles often introduces friction and can disrupt recommendation algorithms. To address this, YouTube says that in the coming weeks, it will update the sign-up experience within the app to make it easier for parents and children to toggle between their respective accounts with just a few taps.

These updates align YouTube with broader industry standards regarding the online safety of minors. Competitors such as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook have already implemented similar parental controls on their platforms. The new features build upon YouTube’s existing parental controls for teens, which include the ability to supervise a teen’s channel activity if they are making content. This supervision has become an industry standard across major social media platforms. Additionally, last year, the platform unveiled age-estimation technology to predict if an account belongs to a teen so that it can provide a more age-appropriate experience.

Why it matters

YouTube’s move to tighten control over Shorts reflects a broader industry shift toward prioritizing the online safety of minors, aligning its platform features with competitors like TikTok and Instagram.