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YouTube Addiction

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Re: YouTube Addiction

#291

Post by Apocryphon »

altCtx wrote: post #269
starbugs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I believe that’s good advice, I find it hard to ignore the irony here.

Passive consumption and active skill building are different emotional contexts. Adam Smith wrote of it hundreds of years ago; extreme division of labor will make humans as dumb as the lowest creature. To reduce screen time during covid I ditched my TV, bought a guitar. Not saying everyone should pick up music; I already knew how to play saxophone and piano; it was evolving my current state. The point is I cut passive…

“ A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

-Robert A. Heinlein

Re: YouTube Addiction

#292

Post by Apocryphon »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #158
bobmichael wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't willpower through it if it's a defense mechanism employed by your brain to hide underlying pain. Maybe it's time to try something new. Check out Gabor Maté: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=74DDEDmHDvw

If you're intent on getting off the internet, Gabor has several books worth reading. One trouble with his writing and speaking on the subject isn't that I think he's wrong or does a bad job at all, but like anything in psychology, you aren't going to read it and "get there", so to speak. What Gabor describes is often years of critical reflection away from fully making sense. I guess from my perspective I don't get th…

Which books of his would you recommend one start with?

Re: YouTube Addiction

#293

Post by anthomtb »

tayo42 wrote: post #179
anthomtb wrote: post #129

> I got into self-help and meditation I know it can be expensive but consider a real live therapist alongside self help resources. Talking out your problems to an actual human, who is trained to listen, can provide the quantum leap needed for resolving a whole host of personal problems. Personally, Apples screen time limits and Downtime features have been a god send for my overwatch issues on Instagram. I have most n…

How do you you find a good one?

Trial and error. I wish I knew a way to find a good therapist without that process. But I do not. And unlike dentists, doctors, counter installers, pet sitters, window cleaners and most other services, folks will not fall over themselves to give you a therapist recommendation (maybe that is a peculiarity of my circle of acquaintances).

To find a therapist, Psychology Today worked well enough. To me, having one is better than having none.

Re: YouTube Addiction

#294

Post by superkuh »

charles_f wrote: post #194
superkuh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1: And that's the problem: people believing they know what addiction is and applying it to pretty much anything they or others like to do. It's like how people who are a little finicky would say, "Yeah, that's my ADHD." but it's not. The other groups advocating for useless loose definitions of "addiction" are typically scam groups that run paid seminars for things like "porn addiction". About as legit as anti-homosex…

papers: - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35682491/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28542470/ - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352799801_Social_me... Note that the DIS also categorizes gaming disorders under addictive behaviors, I encourage you to read the definition for "other disorders resulting from addictive behaviours", that the author's description matches. https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http%…

I do appreciate you linking to articles but these articles are pretty terrible.

re #1: The WHO adding internet addiction reflects the amount of sway China's political processes have over WHO declarations more than anything else. Their internal political narrative is that this is a problem and the WHO is being used to support that. The repetition of the falsified blue light hypothesis re: sleep is also informative re: the quality of citation #1. As for "changes in glutamatergic and gabaergic" signalling... if that doesn't happen when it means you're brain dead. Glutamate or GABA expressing neurons literally make up ~3/4 of the neuronal cells in the brain. And both are regulated extraceullary by glial cells too. You cannot do anything without changing this. If they'd done fMRI or PET or something and could shown long term abberant changes in the glutamergic signalling in the shell of the nucelus accumbens then maybe it'd be saying something. But they don't and I'm getting ahead of myself.

Citation #2 shows that when people are doing something relaxing and then they stop doing it they aren't as relaxed. That's hardly surprising. The arguments seem to be pop-sci level characterizations of the brain where any change is seen as significant or having a valance, good or bad.

And then they go and cite obviously false out-dated concepts like the idea of dopaminergic cells being neccessary or sufficient for expressions of pleasure/reward,

> Dopamine plays a critical role in this circuitry, for the subjective pleasure associated with positive rewards, and the motivation or drive-related reinforcements associated with eating, drinking, or drugs [73,74]

>The initially pleasant, so-called rewarding effects of the drug are relayed by the release of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens (NA) by the synaptic endings from the neurons of the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the mesocorticolimbic circuitry [79,80].

It's actually glutamergic cells in the shell of the nucleus accumbens that are necessary and sufficient (but not all encompassing) for pleasure expression in mammals. Dopaminergic neurons can be blocked off with antagonists and the expression is still complete. The modern understanding is that mesolimbic dopaminergic populations encode for wanting and reward prediction. Glutamergic cells encode for reward/pleasure. I'd hope that someone writing a policy paper like this would cite up to date knowledge but it is excusable and a side point.

The real problem with #2 is that it doesn't actually talk about withdrawl symptoms in "digital addicts". It talks about widthdrawl symptoms and neurochemistry known in actual drug addicts and then just implicitly applies that all these statements must apply to the behavior "digital addiction" too. They don't show data about "digital addiction" withdrawl.

The third article is behind a cloudflare wall and I cannot access it.

Re: YouTube Addiction

#296

Post by namaria »

anteloper wrote: post #288
namaria wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's incredibly misguided and crass to plug websites and apps in a discussion about people sharing struggles with addiction to websites and apps.

I don't think I plugged anything. I shared the best thing I've found to partially solve this problem in my own life (open source software I have no relationship to), shared that my full time job is working on this problem (because it's the largest obstacle in my life, not because I am trying to grift) and what I've built so far, with the explicit note that I would not recommend as a single magic bullet for addiction,…

You're very good at rationalizing. I don't think it's a grift. You don't need to get money out of this for this to be a plug. Personal satisfaction, pride, whatever. I think it's misguided to offer apps and websites to people complaining about addiction to apps and websites. At the very least shows lack of empathy and a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the problem being discussed.

Do what you want with the information that a perfect stranger saw what you did here and was irked.

Re: YouTube Addiction

#297

Post by fleddr »

Waterluvian wrote: post #26
cm2187 wrote: post #18

To cure your youtube addiction, just disable your adblocker. Works very well.

Is it just me or is Google quietly in serious distress? Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.” Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising unti…

For me it was especially shocking because I've experienced no transition, straight from 0 to 100 instead.

I've always exclusively interacted with Youtube from my PC, with uBlock enabled. I don't see ads and because I haven't for such a long time, I've normalized that state.

Until I got a new TV, with a fancy TV OS. My mother-in-law was visiting and I was trying to play some clips of her favorite music via the TV app. I was absolutely shocked. Every 2 minutes or so, 2 brief ads in succession.

It makes viewing anything with joy impossible. You can't get into the moment as its constantly stopped in its tracks. Absolute hellish ad regime.

Re: YouTube Addiction

#298

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

smoldesu wrote: post #92
vibrolax wrote: post #38

I occasionally watch "let's play" videos as a harm reduced alternative to actually playing games. A half hour spent watching someone play a game/sim totally relieves my FOMO. It also dissipates my urge to build a gaming PC. As a maker and musician, there's tons of inspiring and informative content on YT. I feel that I'm quite net positive on my use of YT to enrich my life.

> a harm reduced alternative to actually playing games. There's probably some merit to this statement, but I sorta laugh at the difference in harm between 'watching' and 'playing'. Maybe the most candid thing for us to do is acknowledge that the "harm" we're talking about is a lack of gratification.

I was heavily addicted to Diablo 2, playing nonstop for months on end. I watch let’s play videos and can skip through the grind while getting the endorphin hit. I’ve played the re-master for maybe 16-24 hours total in 12 months. For me it’s less about the cost of the game and more about the potential amount of time I may sink into it.

Re: YouTube Addiction

#299

Post by Waterluvian »

fleddr wrote: post #297
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just me or is Google quietly in serious distress? Ads have been getting a LOT worse very quickly. Almost every ad I saw in a day when my UBlock wasn’t working was advertising an actual fraud. Whether crypto or recession get rich quick or “aluminum is giving you cancer.” Advertising frequency is cranked way up. On mobile 5 second unskippables are 6-7 now. I’ll do a search and my ENTIRE screen is advertising unti…

For me it was especially shocking because I've experienced no transition, straight from 0 to 100 instead. I've always exclusively interacted with Youtube from my PC, with uBlock enabled. I don't see ads and because I haven't for such a long time, I've normalized that state. Until I got a new TV, with a fancy TV OS. My mother-in-law was visiting and I was trying to play some clips of her favorite music via the TV app.…

We used to let the kids watch YouTube videos. But now it’s “daaaaad Ad…” every two minutes. YouTube is now banned on the TV.

And while we’re on this topic: Google’s rockstar elite engineers and designers removed the ability to force a resolution for YouTube + Chromecast. But it also wrongly auto detects my gigabit internet as being too weak so it’s literally impossible to get anything above 480p on my basement TV. (Twitch and others stream in HD without issue)

Re: YouTube Addiction

#300

Post by namaria »

smoldesu wrote: post #123
theptip wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is 30 mins watching scratches the itch, 30 mins playing and you are going to play for hours more. (At least, this is how it is for me, can’t speak for the GP.)

Sure. Impulse control plays a major part in both though, which is mostly why I find it funny. My ex-boyfriend had ADHD and swore off video games for the same reason, but he'd end up watching YouTube for hours if I left him unchecked. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I feel like the difference between both addictions is smaller than it seems.

I'd argue passive consumption of content is worse then playing video games. I have no horses in this race, I admittedly spend way too much time streaming content. But at least with games you're doing something. Actively using your brain. There are studies showing games can improve dexterity and problem solving abilities. I doubt watching stuff does the same.
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