I’ve been an avid YouTube user since my early teens. I’ve grown up alongside many YouTubers who I’ve been subscribed to for well over a decade. Watching videos there feels like such a fundamental habit of my life I rarely even question it. I have learned countless things across the wide array of my interests as they evolved over the years. Never once did I consider my use of the platform problematic because consuming content there always felt like I was learning something. And to an extent this is true, the medium to long-form content there that I consumed was of a very high quality and highly informative.
However, with the introduction of YouTube Shorts near the end of 2020, I began to notice that maybe my consumption of YouTube was less productive than I had believed.
I believe that short-form content like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikToks (although I’ve avoided using this platform specifically) and all the rest are pure poison. I understand that this will sound a bit like ‘old man yells at cloud’, as this is the preferred content format of the younger generation. However, having the perspective of the evolution of internet content, along with the platforms that serve it, over the last two decades has shown me the issue with my own consumption.
It’s not a new perspective to describe the fact that when I open YouTube now and click on a Short I will easily spend 30 mins scrolling mindlessly and feel pretty shitty afterwards. And I don’t want to focus specifically on the problem of short-form content in this post. Specifically, I want to talk about YouTube and how it almost always feels beneficial to spend time watching videos there. At least in my experience, consuming content on YouTube feels very different to say, watching Netflix, or scrolling my Instagram feed. But the goal of YouTube is no different than these other platforms; get you to spend as much of your time as possible on the site.
Now, I do believe that the quality of information shared in videos on YouTube is higher than that produced on other classic social media platforms. So some time spent watching videos on YouTube is beneficial and educational. The problem comes with the fact my screen time on my phone has grown year over year. And when I inspect the Digital Wellbeing section of my phone to see what apps I am spending the most of my time on the biggest culprit, by far, is YouTube.
So I think as the years have passed, and the YouTube platform has evolved, as well as my usage of it, the old justifications of ‘consumption as learning’ have led me into a trap. One where I am trained to constantly consume at the expense of other deserving areas of my life that require creative energy. The modern human is a highly refined consumer, but not as much of physical things anymore in the traditional sense, but rather of information.
Time has always been our most valuable resource, so being trained to be a super-consumer on a platform that produces infinite educative entertainment is a dangerous thing. It doesn’t feel as painful as handing over hard cash, or even tapping your card for a transaction. We are paying in time, which feels infinite when we are young. But as I get older, I am reflecting more and more on how I am spending my time. And spending is the key verb here. You never truly know how much you will have other than the current moment, so it is literally invaluable.
So I am setting the intention to curb my YouTube use this year. I tried to delete the app from my phone but apparently Google insists on it staying on my Pixel. So I can only disable the app, which is at least better than nothing. I already have deleted all social media apps from my phone apart from Bluesky. But removing the apps is not enough, I need to intentionally fill the void they leave with something meaningful. For me, this will simply be more movement. I want to spend more time in local parks, get more sunshine on my skin, and just spend more time outdoors. With that, I hope to spend my time more meaningfully and finish each day a little more fulfilled. I also intend to spend more time creating, in opposition to consuming, in whatever form that takes (this blog post being one such example).