YouTube is adding an option to limit the time you spend watching Shorts

YouTube is rolling out an option that will allow users to set a limit on how long they watch Shorts every day. Is Google admitting that Shorts are affecting the mental health of viewers?

Social media has affect people's reading comprehension, and writing habits. IYKYK. They may be designed for entertainment, but they do more harm than good. When was the last time you read a book from start to finish? Smartphones have made people dumber. Even AI is making people lazier, as they have begun to rely on summaries instead of reading an article. TL;DR.

Short videos, or as I like to call them, brain rot, are a real problem. Brain rot is an officially recognized word by Oxford. In fact, it was Oxford's word of the year in 2024. Short videos have influenced people negatively. It's a common sight on trains, buses, planes, to see people just doomscrolling away, with no end in sight. Some people stay up in bed staring at their mobile screens, aimlessly scrolling their feed. "YouTube Shorts are now averaging over 200 billion daily views", those were the words of Neal Mohan, YouTube's CEO. He said that in June 2025. That's not good.

What's good is that YouTube is addressing the problem, even if it won't say it outright. An announcement was made on YouTube's support community says that it is introducing an option to allow users to set a daily limit for how long they can scroll on the Shorts feed on mobile.

How about a setting to disable Shorts completely? Short form videos are likely YouTube's biggest moneymakers right now, so don't expect them to go away. A timer to limit the amount of videos that you watch, or more precisely, how long you watch. That's not a bad start. Well, anything that helps with the brain rot is good.

There are no screenshots or videos that highlight how the feature works. The announcement says that users can set and adjust the daily limit for scrolling on the Shorts feed from the Settings.

Lifehacker reports that a similar time-limit feature exists on Instagram and TikTok. Sadly, the option to control the time limit does not seem to be available for me yet on the YouTube app for iOS or Android. It's worth noting that YouTube says that the prompt is dismissable, it just pauses the feed after the user hits the limit, so it can be bypassed. This is where self-control matters, if you want to quit doomscrolling, you're going to need to be disciplined. YouTube does have a break reminder feature already, the new option is different. YouTube is also planning to bring this Shorts feed time limit to parental controls later this year. And this option will be a non-dismissable setting for kids and teens.

On a side note, it looks like YouTube's redesigned video player is rolling out to more users. It's now available for me on the web version, not that I asked for it, on an account that's not logged in. Firefox Extensions like BlockTube, Improve YouTube continue to work, so at least the redesign didn't break those.

Do you watch short videos?

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☞ El artículo completo original de Ashwin lo puedes ver aquí