YouTube Gives Parents More Control Over Teens’ Shorts and Screen Time

As of January 2026, YouTube has rolled out new parental control features for supervised teen accounts, with a clear focus on reducing or limiting endless scrolling, improving screen-time habits, and strengthening privacy for teens.

The biggest change is that parents can now control how much time teens spend watching YouTube Shorts, including setting the limit to zero, which blocks Shorts entirely.

Rather than trying to keep teens away from online platforms, Google says these updates are meant to help families use YouTube more intentionally and safely, especially during school days, study time, and late evenings.

What parents want

Over the years, Google has developed separate YouTube experiences for kids and teens, shaped by feedback from parents and child-development experts. That feedback has consistently focused on three needs:

· Controls that help teens build healthier viewing habits, while still allowing parents to step in

· Age-appropriate content, with stronger safeguards for younger users

· Clear age-based experiences, so kids and teens don’t end up in settings meant for adults

The latest updates are designed to address those concerns more directly, especially for teens who use YouTube independently.

Related:

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What’s new for supervised teen accounts

Parents now have more flexibility when it comes to short-form content and overall screen time.

Key parental control updates:

• Shorts time limits. Parents can set daily limits on the Shorts feed, from zero minutes up to two hours.
• Full Shorts block. Shorts can be turned off entirely on a supervised account, which may be especially useful during exams or focused study periods.
• Stronger time-management tools. Custom “Take a Break” and bedtime reminders build on YouTube’s existing wellbeing features for teens.
• More private defaults. Teen uploads are now set to the most private option by default, helping reduce accidental oversharing.
• Safer recommendations. YouTube says its systems will avoid repeatedly recommending sensitive or potentially harmful content, such as extreme fitness or body-image-focused videos, to teen users.

Clearer standards for content creators, too

YouTube is also working more closely with creators through new content guidelines and principles meant to support and educate them. At the same time, the platform will steer teen recommendations toward videos that are more enriching, age-appropriate, and supportive of wellbeing, such as content from Khan Academy, CrashCourse, and TED-Ed, and show them more frequently to teens.

Entertainment content remains part of the experience, but YouTube says the goal is to reduce the risk of teens being pulled into unhealthy content loops.

How parents can manage these settings

Teens are already placed into under-18 accounts by default. Soon, parents will also be able to create kid accounts more easily and switch between family profiles directly in the YouTube app.

This makes it easier to ensure each child is watching in an age-appropriate environment, without constantly adjusting settings or worrying about who’s logged in.

Parents can review and adjust controls through:

· the YouTube Family Center, or

· the Google Family Link app

Basic steps:

• Open the Family Link app and select your child
• Go to Controls → Content restrictions → YouTube
• Adjust preferences under YouTube settings

Children’s safety is changing across platforms, but family safety is still your responsibility

These updates follow YouTube’s earlier move to estimate users’ ages and automatically apply teen protections, even if a younger user enters an adult birthdate when signing up. Other major platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, ChatGPT, and Character.AI, have also introduced tighter controls and safety features for younger users over the past year.

Still, platform-by-platform protections can only go so far. Since families can’t rely on every app to offer the same safeguards, consider a family plan from Bitdefender that helps protect children, teenagers, and all family members across the online spaces they use.

Learn more, here.