There’s been a lot of talk recently about how AI like ChatGPT is making people dumber. But AI isn’t the only thing stealing our attention and time. Doomscrolling has also become a household issue, with many turning to TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts for minutes or hours at a time, getting lost in the endless stream of short videos available to them.
However, it looks like YouTube is unhappy with the amount of time that people have been spending watching Shorts. This is likely in response to recent pushes for parental controls, something else that the company says it is working on. The site already offers a Restricted Mode, but that’s just a start. To address the amount of time people are spending going down the Shorts rabbit hole, YouTube says it will introduce a new daily timer that limits how long you can scroll on the Shorts feed when watching it on your mobile device.
“Users can set and adjust a daily limit for how long they can scroll on the Shorts feed by going to Settings. Once the set time limit has been reached, they will receive a dismissible prompt that scrolling on the Shorts feed is paused for the day,” the post reads.
How YouTube helps you manage your time
This, of course, isn’t the first time that YouTube has introduced features that help users manage their time on its popular video sharing platform. The YouTube app already includes Bedtime and Take a Break reminders that users can set, and there are plenty of anti-doomscrolling apps out there. But having a Shorts timer built directly into the YouTube app makes the option even more accessible.
We have yet to see exactly how it works, but it will presumably live along the other time management settings. If you open the YouTube app, head to the You tab, and hit the gear icon in the top-right corner, you’ll open the Settings menu. From there, tap on General, and at the top you’ll see two toggles that read “Remind me to take a break” and “Remind me when it’s bedtime.”
If you’re interested in seeing how much time you’re spending on YouTube, you can easily find that data in the mobile app as well. On the You tab, scroll down and tap on Time watched to pull up a graph of how much time you’ve spent watching YouTube over the past 7 days.
