YouTube lets parents kill Shorts

YouTube is adding a parental control that can shut off Shorts on a child’s phone without blocking the rest of YouTube. (cnet.com) The control sits inside Google Family Link, the company’s app for managing kids’ Google accounts and devices. Google’s help pages now list a “Set a Shorts feed limit” option for supervised YouTube accounts, alongside watch-history controls, autoplay settings, and bedtime reminders. (support.google.com) Family Link already lets parents set per-app time limits on Android and Chrome OS, but Google says system apps cannot use those app limits. The new Shorts setting is different: it is built into YouTube’s own supervised-account controls rather than the broader device timer. (support.google.com) Google describes supervised YouTube accounts as a parent-managed version of YouTube and YouTube Music for children under 13, or the local equivalent age. Parents can also pick content settings, block channels, pause search history, and review watch history from Family Link or YouTube’s Family Center. (support.google.com) CNET reported on April 17 that parents can set the Shorts timer to 0 minutes on iPhone and Android, which effectively removes the Shorts feed in the mobile app. The same report said the feature was first made available to parents linked to supervised accounts and was still rolling out to other users. (cnet.com) That gives parents a narrower tool than deleting YouTube or locking the whole phone. A child can still watch regular YouTube videos inside a supervised account, but the swipe-heavy Shorts feed can be cut off separately on mobile. (support.google.com) YouTube has spent years building Shorts into its main app. The company launched Shorts creation tools in India in September 2020, brought the Shorts beta to the United States in March 2021, and expanded the format globally later in 2021. (blog.youtube) The audience for all of this is large. Pew Research Center said in July 2025 that YouTube is used by about nine-in-ten U.S. teens, and in April 2025 it reported that 45% of teens said they spend too much time on social media. (pewresearch.org) Pew also found in April 2025 that girls were more likely than boys to say social media hurt their sleep, with 50% of girls and 40% of boys saying that. Google’s YouTube help page now places the Shorts limit next to “take a break” and bedtime reminders, which points to the same screen-time problem parents have been trying to manage. (pewresearch.org) For families that wanted YouTube without the endless vertical scroll, Google has now drawn that line inside its own app. On mobile, the timer can be the off switch. (cnet.com)