Battling my YouTube Addiction

CW: Discussion of behavioral addiction, depression and mental health issues

Despite the topic of smartphone and social media addiction being very prevalent these days YouTube seems to have avoided any considerable amount of fire. Presumably this is because YouTube is in large part comprised of legitimately useful, enriching and often educational user generated content.

Despite this, YouTube has many of the same guiding principles that make platforms like TikTok, Netflix and even traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram addictive; Just like other platforms YouTube’s algorithm and UI is fine tuned to deliver content that will keep you watching (not necessarily content that’s enriching to you) and features like auto-play maintain this compulsive viewing.

While YouTube is a perfectly healthy tool for recreation and learning for most people that unfortunately isn’t the case for me. YouTube offers a convenient out for my ADHD-brain that keeps me glued in place. My YouTube habit has become so severe that a day doesn’t go by without me watching videos on the platform, and usually I spend most of the day in bed watching YouTube, neglecting to get up in the morning or go to bed at night.

The worst part is that I don’t even feel good after watching YouTube, I rarely learn anything that I remember afterwards and the only feeling I walk away with is a kind of numbness.

If a behavioral addiction is defined as not being able to stop despite the negative consequences then unfortunately I’m addicted to YouTube.

To be clear, I don’t expect that quitting YouTube would make me some kind of productive mastermind, my various neurodivegencies make that unlikely, and it’s highly likely that my YouTube habit is a symptom of a greater problem rather than a problem per se (though I’m sure it isn’t helping anything). But, I’d rather be doing anything else than watching YouTube. Of course activities like studying and reading make me feel best but even low effort activities like playing video games or watching a movie make me feel better than watching YouTube.

I worry that one day I’ll wake up and my life will have passed by in front of YouTube…

To that end I’d like to cut out YouTube for an indeterminate length of time, it’s apparent to me that my addiction is so severe that at the present moment there can be no healthy consumption. Perhaps in time I’ll be able to develop healthier consumption habits that enable me to watch responsibly, but at the moment that isn’t possible.

I’ll update this article bellow as I continue this experiment, I hope that this page will be a sort of accountability partner.