Towards YouTube Sobriety
A while ago, I wrote that I was mostly satisfied with how I use my phone. That was true then, but I've since started spending an unhealthy amount of time on YouTube.
Plenty of the time, I'll come home tired from a social event or my mineralogy lab, and I'll just end up watching YouTube for hours. I'm not opposed to a little bit of mindless entertainment, a little bit every now and then is fine. But, I'm doing it too much. I'm ashamed to say that I sometimes bring YouTube to the toliet.
And, on a different level, I resent being fed content by an algorithim. A coporation is manipulating me to click on things I don't really want to. It's the same way I feel about much of advertising. 1
So, I've decided to nuke my YouTube usage. I ended up installing the Untrapped extension, which I'd had on my computer but not my phone. It lets you customize all sorts of stuff, I ended up turning off thumbnails and disabling recommended videos, and that's helped me a lot.
Even better, it lets you block YouTube at certain times of the day. I've disabled it before I go to bed, and I think this'll help my sleep.
I can't say how this'll turn out, it's only day one of YouTube sobriety! But, I think it'll be a big improvement.
Sometimes, ads are like "hey, we made this thing / provide this service. Here's what it is and why you might like it." And that's fine with me. But a lot of the time (especially on the internet) they feel sensationalistic and manipulative.↩