YouTube’s new timer wants to save you from yourself

One minute, you’re watching a hilarious or even completely bland YouTube short. The next? You realize you’ve just lost an hour of work time or managed to stay up way too late—again. Losing track of time when watching shorts is not an uncommon experience. 

But now, YouTube wants to help you set limits to stay on task, hit the hay, or just, ya’ know, not lose precious hours of your life to Shorts.

On Wednesday, the video streaming giant rolled out a new timer feature on its mobile app. When users log on, they can go into their settings and click on “shorts feed limit” to set a timer that will remind them to stop scrolling. Once users hit their time limit, the app will send them a notification letting them know they’ve reached their limit. Of course, it’s not hard to dismiss the timer and keep on watching Shorts. Still, the feature may help to nudge users to get back to work. 

“Shorts are a core part of the YouTube experience,” YouTube said in its announcement. “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.”

When it comes to setting time limits for scrolling, this isn’t YouTube’s first effort. The company has already had both “Take a Break” and “Bedtime” features in its mobile app settings. And while other social media platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, have since added similar features, YouTube was one of the first streaming platforms to help users put their phones down. 

Earlier this year, YouTube announced it was doubling down on its bedtime reminder feature for teens, which became automatic in 2023. At the time, Jon-Patrick Allen, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Rutgers School of Public Health, told Fast Company that users will still have to exercise some self-restraint. “It will be effective for a small proportion of people, but the onus is still on the user to turn it off.”

Allen added, “These are all cosmetic things that may work for some people, but aren’t really going to shift user behavior.”

Either way, the move feels like an invaluable one. According to YouTube internal data, per Sprout Social, last year, YouTube Shorts averaged 70 billion views a day. And it’s not just Gen Alpha and Gen Z who are endlessly watching YouTube hijinx: 25-to-34-year-olds—a combination of both Gen Z and millennials—are the platform’s most diligent viewers. No wonder workers are distracted and groggy.

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