• by Colin Kirkland , 2 hours ago

As Australia and other countries around the world begin passing laws that ban children from social media platforms, YouTube is giving parents more power to control what video content their kids see. 

Now parents can set time limits for YouTube Shorts, the Google-owned company’s scrollable short-form video format, similar to Instagram Reels and the TikTok feed. According to a YouTube blog post, parents will soon be able to restrict their kids from watching Shorts videos entirely.

Parents “can set the Shorts feed limit to zero when they want their teen to use YouTube to focus on homework, and change it to 60 minutes during a long car trip to be entertained,” the company’s announcement explains. 

In addition, parents of supervised accounts will soon be able to set custom alerts on their kids’ accounts reminding them to go to bed and to take a break from the platform, building on mental health initiatives originally introduced by the company in 2023. 

In developing these parental tools, YouTube has continued its parentship with its Youth Advisory Committee, as well as members from the American Psychological Association, Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children’s Hospital and other global organizations. 

Shorts time limits and other parental controls apply to users with under-18 accounts, which the company reportedly checks with age-estimation technology that it announced last year. 

Over the next few weeks, YouTube will invite parents to create a new child account, with the ability to switch between accounts in the mobile app more seamlessly.