YouTube is rolling out stronger parental controls, including the power to cap or even switch off Shorts entirely for kids’ accounts. Will new reminders and centralised settings really curb doomscrolling, and how easy is it to set up? — Photo: Nico Tapia/dpa
LOS ANGELES: YouTube has announced it will expand its protection settings for child and teen accounts with new tools to help parents manage their children’s viewing and restrict content by age, including new controls for the popular short videos known as "Shorts".
Parents can now specify how long their child may use YouTube Shorts each day – the short, vertical clips similar to TikTok – or block them entirely.
How to do it: YouTube app > Settings > Family Centre/Parental controls > select the child or teen account > set a daily Shorts time limit, for example:
- 15 minutes
- 30 minutes
- 0 minutes/off
Why? Short videos can quickly lead to uncontrolled scrolling, and tech industry media have reported that Shorts often include content that parents have actually prohibited or blocked.
Reminders for breaks and bedtime
Further options can help structure the day:
- "Take a break" – prompts a pause after prolonged use
- "Bedtime" – helps switch the app off in the evening
These options are also found under parental controls in Family Center.
Family Centre lets you manage all settings for child and teen accounts centrally, assign age categories, view accounts and switch between multiple child profiles.
Setup and management will become more intuitive, similar to streaming platforms where adult and child profiles appear together on a start screen, said Garth Graham, YouTube’s global head of Health, in comments to German tech news website Heise Online.
As an alternative to Family Centre, parents can continue to use Google’s Family Link child-protection app to adjust settings for child or teen accounts, which will then also apply to YouTube, Graham added.
For children under 13 there is the YouTube Kids app, where restrictions are preset. – dpa
