One more video and then I'll sleep

Many of us have the same problem. Some days we find ourselves watching a particular video before going to sleep, telling ourselves that this will be the last one and after It we'll close the app hit the pillow. However, more than we would like to admit, a recommended video will pop up just before the previous one ends and we'll be drawn back towards the same platform, ending up watching random videos till 6:00 am. Don't get me wrong, with this I'm not saying that Youtube is a bad and evil social media platform, because It is full of useful information that can help us in all fields, making data more available to us and easier for us to learn new things, though there's a dark side to It. In this article I will talk about how all this addiction cycle works and what you can do about It with a series of strategies to combat It.

Why Youtube is so addictive?

Well, as you would expect, youtube is a very competitive place. All content creators in It are constantly fighting to get your attention, and many of them will resort to different strategies to do so, like using Clickbait titles or promising outlandish things in their videos. All this has to do with the metrics youtube uses for the retribution of the creators, where they recommend youtubers with a higher click-through rate than others and also longer watch times. In addition to this, while all these videos flow, they can put ads, usually payed by others content creators to promote themselves in the middle of these videos to get a benefit.

This surely doesn't end here, as the youtube algorithm is specifically designed to be suited to your preferences, listening and taking account of your preferences according to which videos you most prefer to watch and what content you visit most in the internet.

Now that we've made this clear, we can begin to talk about a series of quick tips to break your youtube addiction, or at least make It less of a problem.

Increase friction

With this I mean that you make youtube less accessible for you, or at least the damaging parts of It, like the feed with Its recommendations and the comments section. There are many ways to do this, as you can use AdBlock to not show the feed of Youtube's main page, or even use extensions that are dedicated to this sole purpose, which blocks the recommended and comment section, making for you easier to get to a video without diverting your attention to other.

Remember yourself of the opportunity cost of It

More of an exercise in remembering the time you lose with all those visits to youtube. You might be prone to say that you don't spend too much time watching Youtube videos. However, when you put It in perspective with the greater scheme of things, you might found out that you're actually losing a lot of time. An hour of the 16 that you are awake in the day is actually a big number, taking into account that in a week that would be 7 hours, in a month 28-31 hours and in a year 336-372 hours out of 8640, amounting for almost 5% of your year, which might be a time used in other endeavours that actually make you feel better.

Have a bigger regard and demand for your time

The problem with youtube is that It is the default activity we go to when we have free time. However, a way to combat It is to actually occupy our time with other meaningful things that make It harder for us to go to youtube. As we have more variables to take into account we will find that our time gets consumed by them and that we won't have much more to spare in youtube, having our hours in "high demand".

I'm not saying with this that you should stop watching youtube altogether, as It can help us and serve as a great form of entertainment. What I'm really saying is that you shouldn't let yourself get distracted from your goals and get into hours and hours of procrastination against your real goal, so reducing the time you spend in this otherwise beautiful platform is the best course of action in the long run. Thank you for your support and good luck!