For once, YouTube is making a change to the short-form content beast that is Shorts that doesn’t attempt to convince you to stick around a little longer. In fact, it’s doing the opposite by introducing a new daily timer to the app to kick users off the platform and recover a smidgen of their attention span.
“Shorts are a core part of the YouTube experience. Setting a scrolling time limit on the Shorts feed allows for this exploration while helping users be more deliberate about their viewing habits and manage their time effectively,” YouTube said in a post on its support forums.
Why not touch some grass instead?
This isn’t like YouTube’s existing ‘bedtime’ or ‘take a break’ reminders — which prompt users to stop watching the platform’s longer-form content at a certain time of day — but instead adds a self-imposed time limit that will halt all Shorts scrolling once met. It’s up to the users to stick with the limit, as the tool can be disabled after the fact.
If that sounds like something that might help you curb your Shorts consumption, the new timer can be found inside the YouTube app’s settings. Our smartphone has yet to receive the update, but we’re betting the feature will be tucked away in Settings > General, alongside the “bedtime” and “take a break” reminders when it turns up.
Read More: Google cracking down on YouTube Premium Family
YouTube wasn’t first here, copying the likes of TikTok and Instagram’s similar anti-doomscrolling features as pressure mounts to protect younger users from this type of content. While the pop-ups can be easily dismissed, Google mentioned it is working on proper parental controls to let parents define how much time their children spend watching Shorts, arriving sometime next year.
Google began rolling out these changes to all users on mobile today, though the new setting may not have reflected in your account yet. YouTube didn’t mention when, or even if, it would roll out the timer to desktop users, which means they must look out for themselves for the time being.
