YouTube Adds New Shorts Viewing Timer to Improve Time Management and Digital Well-being

It has become common for users to open a short video thinking they'll watch just one, only to find themselves spending a full hour on the app. In an effort to help users manage this behavior, YouTube is adding a new timer feature. This move reflects increasing public pressure on technology platforms, as well as the company's interest in fostering long-term engagement rather than risking user burnout with short-form content.

Users can now set a daily time limit for watching Shorts videos via the app's settings. Once this limit is reached, a pop-up notification appears, informing them that scrolling through Shorts feeds has stopped, although this notification is dismissible. Earlier this year, after Android Authority spotted the feature in development within an Android APK, YouTube confirmed it was exploring a time-limiting feature for Shorts consumption.

Developing Parental Control Tools for YouTube Shorts

YouTube states that this limit does not currently integrate with parental control tools, meaning parents or guardians cannot simply set a specific limit for how much their children browse the Shorts feed. However, the company says parental control tools will arrive next year (YouTube announced on September 4, 2024, the rollout of new parental control updates that allow parents to link their accounts to their teenage children's accounts to monitor their activity on YouTube and YouTube Shorts. This feature will include notifications for parents when new videos are uploaded or video privacy settings are changed, and children will not be able to dismiss these notifications. These updates aim to provide more transparency and control for parents over their children's experience on the platform, building on parental control features introduced in 2021 for supervised accounts for children under 13. Source: TechCrunch, Published: September 4, 2024).

Previous Digital Well-being Features from YouTube

In the past, YouTube rolled out digital well-being features, including "take a break" and "bedtime" reminders to curb users' endless scrolling habits. For instance, with the "take a break" feature, users can set a reminder to appear every 15, 30, 60, 90, or 180 minutes, at which point the video pauses. Users can then choose to dismiss the reminder and continue watching, or close the app. Similarly, with the bedtime reminder feature, users set a specific time window (start and end time) when they wish to be reminded to stop watching and go to bed. When bedtime arrives, YouTube displays a notification reminding them to stop watching.

While such features help demonstrate corporate responsibility, their optional nature means they may not genuinely reduce engagement, allowing YouTube to address concerns about addictive design while maintaining its core business model. According to a recent report by Bloomberg Law, there are approximately 2000 lawsuits pending in the U.S. against social media companies, where families, school districts, and state attorneys general allege that platforms have intentionally designed addictive features that harm children's mental health.