YouTube has announced a significant expansion of its parental control features, giving parents more power to manage how much time their children and teens spend watching YouTube Shorts. The move comes as online child safety continues to dominate global conversations around social media regulation, screen addiction, and age-appropriate digital experiences.
The Google-owned platform revealed that parents can now set time limits specifically for YouTube Shorts on their children’s supervised accounts. Shorts, YouTube’s short-form video format designed to compete with TikTok and Instagram Reels, has been criticized for encouraging endless scrolling and reduced attention spans. With the new update, parents can define how long their kids are allowed to watch Shorts each day, helping curb excessive screen time.
More notably, YouTube is also allowing parents to block Shorts entirely. This can be done either permanently or temporarily, offering flexibility for situations such as exam preparation, homework hours, or digital detox periods. Parents who want their children to focus on educational videos rather than entertainment-driven content can now enforce that preference with a single setting.
In addition to Shorts controls, YouTube is enhancing its custom “Bedtime” and “Take a Break” reminders. These reminders prompt users to step away from videos after a set time or during late hours. While these tools have been available to adults for self-regulation, extending them with customization options for children adds another layer of parental oversight.
Another practical improvement is YouTube’s upcoming update to its account-switching experience. Many parents struggle to toggle between their own accounts and their children’s supervised profiles without disrupting their personal recommendation algorithms. YouTube says the app will soon make switching accounts easier with just a few taps though it still depends on users remembering to switch correctly.
These new features build upon YouTube’s existing teen supervision tools, which already allow parents to monitor channel activity if their teens are content creators. Such controls have become standard across major social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook, as governments and advocacy groups push for stronger child safety measures.
Last year, YouTube also introduced age-estimation technology designed to identify teen accounts and automatically provide a more age-appropriate experience. Combined with the latest parental controls, YouTube is signaling a stronger commitment to protecting minors while balancing engagement on its platform.
As scrutiny around social media’s impact on young users intensifies, YouTube’s latest update positions it as a more parent-friendly platform in the evolving digital safety landscape.
