YouTube hopes to curb doomscrolling with Shorts timer

Social media doomscrolling has become pervasive. Whether their preferred app is TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or X, people are wasting hours continuing to view post after post, most of which they have no real interest in, with little regard for the world beyond their screen.

While most social media companies are just fine with this sort of engagement, YouTube is trying a contrary approach, letting users of its YouTube Shorts app set a daily time limit, after which an alert will pop up, encouraging them to take a break.

While users can dismiss that pop-up, it does, at least, give them an awareness of the time that has passed.

The feature is not currently a part of YouTube's parental controls, meaning parents can't set time limits on how long their kids are glued to the app. That's expected to change next year, though — and kids won't be able to dismiss the alerts.

YouTube has a history of this sort of alert. The company already offers a feature that will remind you that it's bedtime and you might want to wrap up watching videos on autoplay. In 2018, it also introduced the "Take a Break" reminder, which would pause videos after a certain time period.

Tech addiction and algorithms designed to hook users into staying on a site are a growing area of legal concern. Two years ago, dozens of states sued Meta, saying its platforms were addictive and harming the mental health of young people. That same year, the U.S. Surgeon General sent an advisory saying social media posed a "profound risk" to teenager's mental health.

Mental health experts have been sounding this warning for some time. Robert Lustig, a professor of pediatrics focused on endocrinology  at the University of Southern California and author of The Hacking of the American Mind, said of technology in 2022 “It’s not a drug, but it might as well be. It works the same way … it has the same results."