I used to watch a lot of YouTube. First thing I did after coming home from high school was binge as many Overwatch videos as possible before my parents came home. Whenever I felt that dreaded need to read my college textbooks, I procrastinated with Hearthstone highlights. After a long day of work, I'd plop down and treat myself to a night of nuzlocke runs. Once I got injured and was on bedrest for half a year, I escaped with climbing and gaming videos for 10+ hours a day.
Throughout my adult life, YouTube has been by my side, letting me indulge in whatever interest I had at the time. If I had to estimate how many hours I've spent on YouTube, 10 years times 2 hrs a day is just over 7,000 hours. Wow... If I had spent those hours on a hobby, I'd almost be an expert by the 10,000 hours rule.
Although my YouTube watching had always felt a tad "unproductive," I didn't realize until recent years that my relationship with YouTube could literally be diagnosed as an addiction. My response to any discomfort or boredom would be a desire to escape into YouTube. My dopamine circuits had been hijacked, and any hard, meaningful work felt bland and impossible.
And so I set out to change my watching habits. I've tried probably a dozen methods from website blockers to setting my screen to grayscale, and from doing 10 pushups before watching to weeklong YouTube fasts. Nothing stuck.
These past few months I've been experimenting with a new approach that has had promise. It's more involved than my previous methods, but it strikes a healthy balance between allowing the good parts of YouTube while discouraging the bad, and so far, it's working. Here's my current strategy for curbing my YouTube addiction.
The strategy acknowledges that YouTube can be an amazing platform to learn, but also a way to rest and relax. My goal isn't to banish YouTube from my life -- it's to let me develop a healthier relationship with it that isn't dictated by the algorithm. By using a couple browser extensions and some of YouTube's built-in features, I've hobbled together a system that allows me to engage with the positive parts of YouTube while steering me away from unhealthy behaviors.
Let's start off with the good stuff. There's tons of educational content that can expose me to new perspectives and ideas, and I want to watch it all. I've been adding these videos to my Watch Later playlist so that I can, well, watch them later. It's relevant that this is the Watch Later list and not a custom playlist, and we'll see why I do this later on.
There are also some creators that I respect and admire and want to see content of but don't want to continuously search for to add their videos to my Watch Later, so these people I subscribe to. Initially, I had hundreds of subscriptions to any channel that I had any interest in, and this is where some reflection had to happen. I went through each channel asking myself if this content was good for me and my development, and if not, I would unsubscribe. This meant unfollowing channels that I've enjoyed over the years but whose content did not make me a better person. Channels like MrBeast, AliensRock, and Chuggaaconroy :(
After compiling an educational Watch Later and curating my subscriptions, I now had healthy content to watch. The good stuff. Now for getting rid of the bad stuff.
The Algorithm. A mystical being whose all-knowing gaze can hypnotize you to make hours pass while feeling like only seconds to you. We need to avoid it at all costs. Thankfully, the browser extension UnTrap is here to help.
UnTrap lets us customize any YouTube page and turn off components like suggested videos, video thumbnails, and comment avatars. I went through each of the hundred or so items and turned off any that made YouTube more addictive without adding any value.
One of my favorite pasttimes that's heavily contributed to my YouTube addiction was reflexively opening the Home page, and accidentally falling down a rabbit hole, only to crawl back out when it was time for my next meal. UnTrap lets us avoid this. There's an option to redirect the Home page to a different page, and I set this to be my Watch Later. Now, when I open YouTube, I see a list of documentaries that are great, but way less enticing than what the algorithm offers.
Even after curating my content and getting rid of the algorithm's influence, I still found myself opening up YouTube every 10 minutes to browse my subscriptions to see if anything new came out. Here's where our second extension comes in: LeechBlock.
LeechBlock lets us set time limits and delay access to certain sites. That second part is where the money is. With LeechBlock, we can redirect youtube.com to the extension's delaying page, which blocks YouTube and only unlocks after 30 seconds of waiting. This means no more impulsive browsing. Only intentional use.
The secondary feature of setting time limits is more well known but just as important. I set my time limit to 15 minutes per half hour, meaning if I wanted to watch multiple 10+ min videos, I'd have to wait at least 15 min (half hour - 15 min) in between. This forces me to only watch 1ish video at a time, preventing binges.
Here's how the system plays out in my daily life: when I open YouTube, I'm forced to wait 30 seconds. Sometimes I'll close our because I realize I just opened YouTube for funsies. But if I opened with the intention of relaxing or learning something, then I'm fine waiting 30 seconds.
After twiddling my thumbs and reflecting on my life for half a minute, I'm redirected to my Watch Later playlist where I have a hundred or so documentaries and educational videos. If I'm not sure what to watch, I shuffle the playlist and give myself 2 skips to find something I like.
The other option is going through my high-quality, curated subscriptions. I almost always find something interesting related to one of my hobbies or to the people I admire. Oh you've finished a video? LeechBlock kicks in after 15 minutes and boots me off the site.
This strategy has mostly worked for the past few months. There are a number of times I've regressed or had to make exceptions, but I've managed to stick with the strategy through some creative workarounds and Pro Strats.
What happens when I want to watch a video longer than 15 minutes? How do I keep my Watch Later stocked? Does all this work on my phone too? Well, now that we've covered the basics, let me get into the nitty-gritty details and corner cases.
Most browsers let you choose which extensions you want to apply to private / incognito tabs. LeechBlock also lets you specify which rule sets apply to private tabs. You might be able to see where we're going with this, but if there's a longer video you want to watch, you can right click -> open in private tabs -> watch without interruptions.
I also use this for research when I'm searching up a topic and see a relevant YouTube video I want to watch. The 30 delay and time limit are to make sure I intentionally use YouTube, and watching videos for research is pretty intentional, so I allow myself to use private tabs for this.
Now for the downsides of private tabs. First off, it gives you a dangerous tool to bypass the safeguards that we walked through earlier, and thus must be used with caution and not abused. I haven't done this as I don't really abuse Private Tabs, but to prevent abuse, you could create a second rule set that only runs on private tabs that has a longer, say 30 minute time limit.
Second downside, videos watched in private tabs will not factor into your YouTube algorithm. This isn't necessarily bad, but sometimes you want to train your algorithm with "good" content, and if you're watching a longer documentary or doing research on an interesting topic, it might be a healthy change to the algorithm.
LeechBlock actually has a built-in way to bypass its rule sets called Override. It lets you, well, override your rules for a certain amount of time. It's essentially the same functionality as private tabs, but time-based instead of URL-based, and also loops in the algorithm.
I honestly use Override about as much as I use private tabs, but it's much easier to abuse since you can watch multiple videos and arbitrarily set the time. However, you can also add guardrails to Override in LeechBlock's General settings, so I've set my Override to only allow 20 min of extra time, with a maximum usage of 3 times a day. I know it sounds like a lot, and it is... Moving on,
I use Override when I'm in the middle of a video and get blocked out (with the "Immediately block page..." setting on), or when I know that a video will go over 15 minutes (after factoring in playback speed calculations). But I should try to use Private Tabs when I can. Either way, it's another, more customizable, option to deal with longer intention YouTube use.
Earlier, I mentioned that the strategy removes the algorithm from play in favor of an educational Watch Later. But once we watch all the videos in Watch Later, how do we re-stock it if we aren't getting new videos from the algorithm?
There are 2 ways I do this. First is just farming from Subscriptions. I follow a number of educational YouTubers like Veritasium, Wendover, Half as Interesting, etc. and add any interesting videos to my Watch Later.
The second way is more dangerous and brings us back to what we've been trying to avoid: The Algorithm. But instead of letting it control us, we are just visiting it and browsing the Home page for videos to add to Watch Later. Occasionally, I might indulge in a new video or two, and occasionally that turns into a few more, but it's a risk I take sparingly. Speaking on indulgence videos...
Sometimes, you return home from work and want to just vegetate to some mindless YouTube. No educational content. No curated subscriptions. Just give me some candy and ice cream this one night.
This is where the Indulgence Playlist comes in. It offers an out for these moments that is not driven by AI nor drawn out by infinite scroll. A small cup of ice cream for dessert instead of eating straight from the tub.
When you browse your Home page of Subscriptions and see a video that you know is a time-waster but can't help but want to watch, you can save it for later into your Indulgence Playlist.
I haven't tried this strategy out yet, but it's been an idea for a while and I thought I might as well include it. I should also try Indulgence Playlists out because, as mentioned earlier, I have, on occasion, browsed the Home page only to binge for hours on junk content. Well, at least it's not...
Just turn them off. LeechBlock has an optional to completely turn off Shorts, so that's what I did. I avoid short form videos like the plague for fear of the damage it could do to my dopamine circuits that longer videos and gaming haven't already done.
But if you absolutely need your fix of Shorts, you can still use the delay and time limiting we do for regular YouTube. Also, if you want to be able to watch individual shorts that come up during research or that friends send you, you can do so safely with UnTrap.
UnTrap has a set of options for the Shorts page, and the two most useful are 1) preventing scrolling, and 2) redirecting to use the normal player. Both of these options prevent infinite scroll, so this at least lets you watch individual shorts.
But what if you only ever watch Shorts on mobile? How do you turn shorts off, or do anything in this post on mobile?
LeechBlock and UnTrap are both extensions and don't work on the YouTube app. So delete it. Delete the YouTube app and use Firefox or Chrome instead. This lets the extensions interact with YouTube and enables everything mentioned in this post.
At first, it felt awkward and backwards to type in m.youtube.com instead of just clicking the app, and that little friction actually helped a lot in reducing impulse accesses. I also found out a little secret that comes with browser YouTube that I can't believe took me this long to realize: you can block ads.
This was huge. Using adblock on mobile-Firefox-YouTube felt amazing, and I recommend all non-premium users to use the browser for YouTube even if you don't do anything else from this post.
With all these tools and strats, I finally had a resilient system that's lasted for more than a couple months. But even still, I feel like I could easily fall into another YouTube rut...
A couple years ago, I was working a stressful job that left me with no energy or motivation to do anything after work. I'd come home and fire up a YouTube video while I cooked, then watch videos for hours until my plate got crusty and it was almost time to go to bed.
While chatting with a friend at a climbing gym who had similar experiences, we realized how much of our life and energy had been taken away by our watching habits, and challenged each other to 1 week of no YouTube.
It was excruciatingly boring at first, but eventually I felt more energetic. I took up my hobbies again and made strides in work projects that I was previously stuck on. I carried that momentum for a couple weeks until one day, I decided I deserved a YouTube break and boom, my night had evaporated. I felt horrible, and couldn't seem to get anything done the rest of the week, and felt too tired to do anything other than... watch more YouTube.
This has been The YouTube Addiction Cycle that I've gone through dozens of times now. At this point, it feels inevitable that at some point in the near future, I'll succumb once again. The saving grace is that over the years, it's felt easier and easier to notice when I'm in a rut, and to take the steps to detox or set up blockers. It's like meditation -- at first you feel constantly distracted, but with time, you're able to focus for longer periods. Eventually, you'll be distracted again, but the time it takes to get there can be prolonged.
The other saving grace is that this cycle can be broken. Or so I've been told.
I've been using the strategy outlined in this post to free up time I'd normally spend on YouTube, but to cure myself of my YouTube addiction, I need to find something to replace that time with so that I don't slip back in a moment of boredom. I need some goal to pursue or hobbies to engage in, and for me, this comes in the form of meditating, guitar, intentional gaming, reading, and now, blogging.
It's still a work in progress, but for the past few months, I've been able to significantly reduce my YouTube usage after setting up my FireFox extension guardrails, and I've been investing that time into my hobbies. I feel like I've struck a sustainable balance where I find fulfillment in my hobbies, then can relax at night to some limited and curated YouTube.
This blog post is a testament of my progress and pursuit of more fulfilling endeavors. Hopefully, I can look back one day and see it as the turning point from a world of distraction and consumption to one of creation and intention.