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YouTube addiction, one month sober

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Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#81

Post by Aurornis »

futureshock wrote: post #46

It’s bit weird, but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return. Apple released their screen time features in 2018, so this issue was just starting to hit critical mass right as Covid hit and dumped us all deep down the digital rabbit hole. Now I notice even more social proof to keep going deeper into the digital life. Pub…

> but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return.

Strange, I had the opposite experience: COVID brought screen time discussions front and center as everyone was getting desperate for things to do away from their screen or becoming cognizant of how much screen time was at the center of their lives now.

I've always done a lot of outdoor activities. There was huge upward trend in the number of people I saw on hikes, out walking, or biking during COVID. It felt like everyone was getting outside again.

But obviously there was another world where people retreated to their homes, got comfortable with screens, and never unplugged.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#83

Post by cooper_ganglia »

srvaroa wrote: post #8

I haven't needed to be so drastic, but removed the YT app from my phone. There is a fair amount of good content that I find very worth consuming from YT (mainly educational videos) and would not like to miss. But, the mobile app makes a very strong effort to push you to shorts, which is the real danger. Shorts are proficiently engineered to just suck my brain into a doom scrolling comma. I tried removing shorts from…

I never go on Facebook, but I do have an account because my Quest 2 forced me to login with one. Anyway, a coworker sent me one of those short-form Facebook Reel videos about some new tech. I watched it, and then the next video played, and I watched it, and then I swiped, and watched, and swiped, and watched... I started at 11am, and when I next looked at the clock it was almost 3pm. I was like, what the hell?? lmao, I do regularly use Youtube, so I try to consciously avoid YouTube shorts now.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#84

Post by cracoucax »

farleykr wrote: post #35

One thing that made a huge difference for me was turning of my watch history. If you do that you get a message on the homepage saying that it can't recommend videos until you turn on your watch history. Not very visually pleasing but it keeps me from scrolling through recommendations and now I only watch videos when a channel I follow puts out new content or when I choose to specifically search for something.

Oooh yes thanks for this, instant disable. History could be convenient at times, but hey not as much as my sanity.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#85

Post by havblue »

farleykr wrote: post #35

One thing that made a huge difference for me was turning of my watch history. If you do that you get a message on the homepage saying that it can't recommend videos until you turn on your watch history. Not very visually pleasing but it keeps me from scrolling through recommendations and now I only watch videos when a channel I follow puts out new content or when I choose to specifically search for something.

I've also found that just deleting your history occasionally can be beneficial as it keeps you from going down a rabbit hole of repetitive but addictive content to watch new things.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#87

Post by DougN7 »

futureshock wrote: post #46

It’s bit weird, but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return. Apple released their screen time features in 2018, so this issue was just starting to hit critical mass right as Covid hit and dumped us all deep down the digital rabbit hole. Now I notice even more social proof to keep going deeper into the digital life. Pub…

The casino scene in the Percy Jackson movie [1] (and book) have always seemed hauntingly accurate to me as far as describing much of modern life.

The thing we all have a finite amount of is time, and we’re increasingly distracted to where we waste more and more of it on unimportant, artificial digital worlds/life while the real world passes by. As I’m getting older, I’m seeing how precious youth, energy, and health are, but those who have the most of that (younger people) seem to be sucked in even more. We’re racing towards the dystopia shown in the movie Ready Player One.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p9-Fbl2QVJc

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#88

Post by sp332 »

SamBam wrote: post #63
bombcar wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Covid and work-from-home normalized screen time. The same thing has happened in the past (an old Wodehouse school-story has a kid being yelled at for reading "trash" (David Copperfield) during class instead of the Latin he was supposed to be working on.

I think that suggesting it's no different from people thinking that reading books was going to rot people's minds ignores the very real increases in teen depression, loneliness, and suicides over the past decade, as well as increases in adult depression and isolation, and the credible research that says that social media and screens are probably strongly contributing to it.

Teen suicides went down when schools were closed at the beginning of the pandemic. They went back up when schools re-opened. https://www.nber.org/papers/w30795 I don't think teens were spending less time on "social media and screens" during this time.

Re: YouTube addiction, one month sober

#90

Post by themagician »

futureshock wrote: post #46

It’s bit weird, but I feel like this conversation about screen time and digital addiction dropped out of the public consciousness during Covid, never to return. Apple released their screen time features in 2018, so this issue was just starting to hit critical mass right as Covid hit and dumped us all deep down the digital rabbit hole. Now I notice even more social proof to keep going deeper into the digital life. Pub…

Social media is no longer just some activity you do. For many, it has become a way of life. Their income and livelihood relies on it. Many children growing up today aspire to be popular on social media. What happens on social media has become part of their core identity.

It will only accelerate from here.

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