I turned YouTube into the perfect social media app by eradicating Shorts

The Bane of Our Attention Spans, the Doomscrolling Demon, the Form That Isn't Your Friend. Short-form video content can be labeled in various ways, but few are positive.

Since TikTok supercharged the addictive nature of social media, we've seen short, scrollable videos spread to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify.

But while you'll struggle to hear anything other than negative descriptions of the form (usually accompanied by an ironic shrug and a sentence that begins with "but at least..."), the truth is that we are in thrall with the form.

There are plenty of ways to mitigate the impact of doomscrolling, but none are as effective as uninstalling the host app. But when we are reliant on these apps for communication, the lure of the scroll is always present.

It's a winning strategy for social media (at least until lawsuits slapped Google and Meta with $6m in damages for intentionally building harmful and addictive social media platforms), which is why I was so surprised by YouTube's decision to allow you to hide the Shorts feed.

But beneath the hood, there's a better way to remove Shorts from your YouTube app.

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YouTube helps you avoid Shorts (but not really)

It's easy to bypass the pitiful restrictions

Part of what makes short-form video content so disruptive is how easy it is to access.

Within seconds of opening your phone, you can be scrolling through Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. The more you do it, the subtler the influence becomes, until you're automatically opening these apps without thinking.

It's the main reason I end up on Instagram Reels, even though I've relegated the app to the darkest, dingiest corner of my phone.

YouTube's change stops the path to doomscrolling before it begins in the least subtle of ways.

In October 2025, Google introduced a daily Shorts timer to the YouTube app, ranging from 15 minutes to 2 hours. After the timer ends, a full-screen notification appears informing you that you've reached the Shorts limit.

In April of this year, the timer options were expanded to include 0 minutes. This means that opening the Shorts tab brings up the notification instantly. However, the system isn't perfect.

Ignoring your Shorts timer is as easy as closing the notification.

By closing the notification or tapping Ignore limit for today at the bottom of the notification, you can resume your scrolling as if nothing had happened.

YouTube is especially sneaky about how it has implemented this feature. You'll catch the briefest glimpse of a Short before the notification pops up, just enough to pique your interest.

However, if this feature is enabled through parental controls, the user cannot dismiss the notification.

Despite some reports indicating that setting the timer to 0 also removed Shorts from the home screen, I was still able to view individual shorts that appeared there. Your experience may vary.

So, while poorly implemented and clearly designed to still reel you in, the YouTube app does an adequate job of making Shorts difficult to watch. But I managed to find out how to kill the Shorts feature entirely.

I've managed to eradicate Shorts from my YouTube app

A simple tweak had unintended consequences

A few weeks ago, frustrated with the slop YouTube was pushing my way, I disabled my watch history. This turned the Home tab into nothing more than a search bar, and allowed me to focus on my subscriptions without interruption.

However, it wasn't until I was testing this new Shorts timer that I noticed an unexpected benefit.

As I described earlier, enabling the 0-minute timer setting for Shorts displays an easily dismissible notification after teasing you with a brief clip.

But if you have watch history disabled, this is what you see instead:

This screen cannot be dismissed, closed, or ignored. You cannot scroll past it, and YouTube doesn't tease you with a Short before it appears. It kills off the Shorts feature entirely.

Initially, I thought this was due to the new watch limit, but after playing with the settings, I discovered that it was completely unrelated.

Turning off your watch history on YouTube has the side effect of preventing you from discovering Shorts in any format.

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The reason I hadn't noticed it before is that I rarely watch Shorts. But now I'm aware, I desperately want this feature to expand to other social media apps, especially Instagram.

I accidentally turned YouTube into the perfect social media app

My YouTube app is now essentially just the Subscriptions screen. So, when I open the app, I'm presented with a list of videos sorted by date with no recommendations.

In short, it's exactly what I want from my social media. Recommendations and suggested content ruin my experience.

In a recent survey of the first ten posts on my Instagram feed, seven were ads or suggested content. Only one in three of the posts I see are from accounts I actually want to see content from.

Imagine if you could remove all suggested content from your Facebook wall. Imagine if you could remove Reels from Instagram entirely. Imagine if the only content you saw on social media was from accounts you follow.

Sounds like a fantasy, right? But YouTube can do it, so why not Facebook and Instagram?

Perhaps the recent lawsuit will prompt a decision, but I won't hold my breath. Instead, I'll revel in my nonsense-free YouTube feed until the ads become unbearable again.