YouTube Shorts

Just when you think you have YT locked down

Sometimes I need to remind myself that digital parenting is a work in progress for me as much as anybody else. Just when I think I’ve got a problem sorted out, something else crops up.

Right now, we are having a YouTube Shorts problem in our house.

As many readers will remember, I first covered YouTube last year (article here). I went into pretty minute detail about how to protect kids on YouTube using Family Link.

It turns out that Family Link (where YouTube Parental Controls live) doesn’t fully cover YouTube Shorts in the way I think parents need it to.

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

The Two Main Issues

• While the content ratings you set through Family Link are supposed to extend to YouTube Shorts, it seems like a lot more slips through the cracks in Shorts. I would venture to guess that smaller short-form content is much harder to consistently classify than long form. Not that I’m accepting that as an excuse.

• No parental control anywhere specifically addresses the endless scroll / dopamine reward cycle issue. Sure you can choose not to allow an app with scrolling or limit the amount of time they can use an app with scrolling but in the case of YouTube which really has two different content viewing experiences you can’t allow regular YouTube while blocking Shorts.

In my brain, long form content on YouTube is in the same category as watching TV shows. While the content creators are different, the consumption behavior is similar i.e. you sit and watch for a while. I lump watching longform YouTube into the TV watching bucket of screen time.

YouTube Shorts are really much more like scrolling TikTok or IG. Shortform content encourages users to jump from item to item. It sets up a dopamine reward cycle which is addictive. I lump YouTube Shorts in with TikTok, IG and Snapchat.

So what do you do if you are ok with regular YouTube (aka the TV watching experience) but not ok with Shorts (the scrolling, quick hit experience)? 

Unfortunately the parental controls don’t help us here. The best we can do is a workaround.

This is definitely more a hack than a solve, but it's the best we can do if we want to keep allowing regular YouTube.

What To Do

• Go into the app 

• Scroll down until you get to the Shorts section (on our iPad it was 4 rows from the top)

• Each Content Tile in the Shorts section has 3 little dots in the upper right hand corner. Tap on those

• Choose Not Interested

• Go to the next content tile and do the same

• Do this for every Short in the section

• Check back tomorrow and make sure no more have cropped up

NOTE: you may need to do this again— I’m not sure if this completely solves the issue. I just did it myself so I will report back if updates are needed.

Voila!

But wait, you’re not done! (sorry)

This is not a 100% cure. Shorts will still appear if your kid goes to youtube.com in a browser. There does not seem to be a way to turn off shorts from the website. 

So, my recommendation is to go into your device settings and block access to youtube.com. Then let your child know that they are to only watch through the app.

How to block a specific website on Safari

1. Go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Web Content > Limit Adult Websites> Tap Add Website under Never Allow.

2. Type the URL of the website and tap Done to save.

How to block a specific website on Chrome

1. Open the Family Link app > Select your child > Tap Controls > Content restrictions >Google Chrome > Select Blocked sites.

2. Add a website or domain.

3. In the top left, tap Save.

Paid subscribers get the audio of this post + my video on how to shut down Shorts in the app.