YouTube and other social media platforms are increasing their parental controls as the online safety of minors remains a prominent international issue. The Google-owned platform announced this week that it is implementing additional parental controls, particularly around the amount of time children and teens spend watching YouTube Shorts.
Parents will now be able to set a timer for how much time connected children’s accounts can spend watching Shorts, which are YouTube’s equivalent of TikTok or Instagram Reels. This aims to help limit the potential for mindless scrolling. Parents can also block accounts from watching Shorts entirely, either permanently or temporarily, such as when a child should be using YouTube for educational purposes.
YouTube will further allow parents to set custom Bedtime and Take a Break reminders, which encourage users to stop watching videos. These features are also available for adults, who can choose to set their own limits.
For parents who also use YouTube, switching between an adult account and a child’s account can be challenging. To address this, YouTube says it will update the in-app sign-up experience in the coming weeks to make it easier to toggle between accounts with just a few taps. This, of course, requires the user to remember to make the switch.
These new features build upon YouTube’s existing parental controls for teens, which include the ability to supervise a teen’s channel activity if they create content. This has become an industry standard, as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook all offer similar controls.
Last year, YouTube also introduced age-estimation technology designed to predict if an account belongs to a teen in order to provide a more age-appropriate experience.