How the way you watch videos can make your life worse

Not even knowing what you want

Have you ever spent nights where you just thought that you will watch a single video about a particular field and then end up at 2 am in the morning watching DIY wooden houses video? Well, I think It has happened to all of us at some point, and the reality about this is that sustaining these kind of habits when consuming content in the internet can make our lives miserable. Apart from the fact that platforms like youtube are specifically designed to catch your attention with every click you make, showing you related content by every time you click on a particular video, you might be using this type of media to stimulate your brain at all moments of the day, without giving you time to think about anything and actually procrastinate about all the things you should be doing. To recognize how this affects us, we'll have to talk about the term "passive consumer" Let's delve further into what this means:

What is a passive consumer?

A passive consumer is someone that is constantly seeking stimulation, not mattering of what kind It is. One easy way to identificate If someone is a passive consumer is to look at their daily routine: Do you see that at all moments when someone is doing a task and get distracted they grab their phone, open instagram and just scroll through Its feed for an indefinite amount of time, at the end losing sight of what they were doing in the first place? Well, you just found one, or even worse, you might be one.

Now that we know what a passive consumer is, we can look at all the disadvantages that just watching youtube and other things for the sake of It at all times can bring upon us.

Overconfidence on Ignorance

Certainly after watching a lot of videos about dinosaurs, how the romans washed their clothes and cellphone repairs, we might consider ourselves true polymaths, however, this is really far from the truth. Every field is really complex and It takes much more than a little glimpse at trivial parts of It to get real mastery. However, this sense of confidence over the little we know and an overestimation of our real level of skill has a defined name, the Dunning Kruger Effect, It being a cognitive bias in which a person of low capacities in a particular field tends to overestimate his/her own abilities, in opposition to what a real skilled subject usually feels, undermining their own expertise.

Being adamantly opposed to other points of view

We all have different opinions and this surely is reflected in what we watch. However, by consuming all this information tailored to suit what you like over everything else, you lose sight as to what counterarguments other might have and the reasoning behind them, even if they're right about It, usually making you more intolerant to other views and make you regress to your habit of just confirming your own opinion, and yes, this also is a cognitive bias that receives the name of confirmation Bias, where we are more prone to only look at sources that confirm our opinion.

Not knowing what you want in life

As you're bombarded with all types of information, you lose track of what you really like and how to track It. With all the little decisions you have to make as to what you have to watch, you get more and more tired with your mental focus as to what to spend your time and energy on, watching videos on a particular subject as a replacement to a particular plan of life just because they feel right, making you experience an internal sense of blame and be more confused as you keep on with this.

I hope that with the information provided in the first part of this series I could have made clear to you the dangers of watching content unresponsibly, all through the eyes of a passive consumer. In the next article I will point out ways to become an active consumer, someone who knows what he wants and what to watch, and how to actually enjoy all those little videos you still want to watch without worrying about how they can derail from the path of true meaning. Thank you for your support and good luck!