YouTube was changing me
I was addicted to YouTube. I never thought it would happen, but there I was, watching videos before sleeping and immediately after waking up. My screen time was through the roof, and it wasn’t all educational material. A lot of it was just junk.
How did that happen? I downloaded the mobile app onto my phone earlier this year after resisting for a long time. I eventually caved because my browser tabs were getting out of control, and I needed the wishlist option to keep things organized.
While I didn’t actively seek out negative content, the algorithm started pushing specific types of videos onto my feed:
- How bad the world is
- Celebrity interviews
- Political drama
- People doing bad things to others
- People getting taken advantage of
The more unintentional time I spent on YouTube, the worse I felt. I started feeling:
- Anxious and negative about the world
- Hopeless and dreadful
- Fearful of certain people
- Like certain people were enemies
- Like I was slowly getting pulled into a tunnel
I eventually recognized the problem and knew that I needed to change how I accessed the app.
I haven't deleted the app yet, but I've made it harder for myself to access it by removing the icon from my home screen. Now I have to go into the search bar to find it every time I want to watch something. It’s a tiny change, but it forces me to be more intentional about when and why I'm opening the app. The goal is to stop mindlessly scrolling.
I’m still a work in progress but I want to provide a warning for anyone else caught in the same cycle. The next time you're doom-watching videos, pause and think about how it's making you feel.