How to block YouTube Shorts for kids (what actually works)

Ask a room of parents what they like least about YouTube and Shorts will come up quickly. They are the short vertical videos that fill a feed you swipe through, and they've become the fastest route from "one good video" to "how is it dinner time already?" This post explains why Shorts are a particular problem for children, what YouTube's own controls do and don't cover, and how to keep them out.

What Shorts are, and why they're different#

Shorts are vertical videos, originally limited to 60 seconds and now allowed to run longer. They appear in a dedicated feed that you move through with a swipe, in shelves on the home page, and in search results.

The format matters more than the content. A long video ends, and the ending is a natural pause. A Short is over in seconds and the next one is already loading. There's no decision point, so there's nothing to resist. That's very effective at holding attention, and exactly the habit most parents don't want to build in a young child.

Content is also harder to judge. Long videos come from channels you can look at; Shorts arrive as a stream from anywhere, chosen by an algorithm, one after another.

What YouTube's own controls cover#

The honest position, as of writing, is that standard YouTube gives parents limited control over Shorts. You can hide individual items or tell YouTube you're not interested, which gradually shapes a feed but doesn't remove it. YouTube has been adding features here, including timers, so check the current settings in the app and in Family Link before you rely on this post.

What we haven't found is a setting on regular YouTube that reliably removes Shorts entirely for a child's account. If you know of one that has appeared recently, it's worth using alongside anything else below.

The approach that works: keep them out of the player#

If your child uses a player that never shows Shorts, there's nothing to resist and nothing for you to police. That means blocking at the level of the app rather than trying to tame the feed.

Two things are needed for this to work well:

1. A player that doesn't have a Shorts feed at all. An allow-list player only plays videos from channels you approved and has no home feed, so there's nowhere for a feed of Shorts to live. This is the biggest single step.
2. A way to block Shorts even inside approved channels. Many good channels post Shorts as well as long videos, and a channel-level approval would otherwise let them through.

How it works in SafePlay#

SafePlay, which we make, handles this in two layers, so this is one example of the approach rather than the only way.

• Per child: on each child's page there's a Block Shorts for [name] switch, and it's on by default for new profiles. With it on, Shorts are kept out of everything that child can watch.
• Per channel: each approved channel has a Shorts setting with three choices: follow the child's setting, block on this channel, or allow on this channel. That lets you allow Shorts from one trusted channel (say, a science channel whose 30-second experiments are genuinely good) while keeping them out of everything else.

Detection is the awkward part. A Short isn't always obvious, so the app decides using signals such as the video's format and length. Clear Shorts are blocked outright. Ones it's unsure about go to a review queue for you to decide, rather than being guessed at.

Doing it on your own, step by step#

Whatever you use, this is the sequence to follow.

1. Decide the default. For most children under about ten, "no Shorts" is the right default.
2. Choose a player without a Shorts feed for younger children, or turn off every Shorts control you can find on standard YouTube for older ones.
3. List the exceptions. If a trusted channel's Shorts are good, allow them for that channel only.
4. Check what actually happens. Watch over your child's shoulder for a session. The real test is whether a Short ever appears.
5. Recheck after updates. Apps change. A setting that worked in spring may have moved by autumn.

Common questions#

Are all Shorts bad? No. Many are funny, clever or educational. The concern is the format's pull and the difficulty of vetting a stream, not every individual video.

Will my child miss out? Children rarely miss something they've never had. Taking away something they already watch is what causes complaints, so if your child already watches Shorts, expect a week or two of them.

What about older children? Teenagers use Shorts, and a total ban can be hard to enforce. A time limit and an honest conversation about why the format is designed the way it is may work better than a block.

Shorts are one part of the bigger picture. Our parent's guide to making YouTube safe for kids covers the rest, and Whitelist vs blocklist explains why choosing channels beats filtering feeds.