The Story

I left social media, or at least a part of it, in 2021 completely. Reasons are for another article.

My Facebook account that I had opened in 2009 was deleted. The Instagram account that I had built quite a following on same thing. Twitter? Got the axe as well. I remember also having SnapChat and deleting it a week later too.

Overall, what was left was WhatsApp and YouTube. And these two were easy to excuse.

• WhatsApp => My school sends updates through groups so I can’t possibly remove it?
• YouTube => I watch educational content only such as videos on coding or fixing stuff. In any case, with the time I am using on YouTube I am still being productive.

The Problem

The problem however is that I have long believed that since I deleted social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook; the classics), I had more time to be productive. And by productivity, I mean actually study more or do the things that I really want to do.

But on closer inspection, I am no different to someone who has 10 social media apps on their phone and changes between each app. I really just replaced the time I thought I was saving with spending it on WhatsApp and YouTube, all because they are both easy to excuse as not wasteful.

Focusing on YouTube

I will tackle WhatsApp later. YouTube is really what forced me to think about this and write it down.

I take pride in that I never got onto the TikTok, Reels or Shorts train. Because short videos take advantage of our short attention spans and make them even shorter. So I always watch long form content on YouTube, usually videos lasting 9 minutes or more. And because most of the videos I watch are educational, I am able to rationally justify spending 2 hours watching video after video after video.

But truth be told, I have a growing discontent internally for the following reasons

1. Time wasting When you have something hard to do, it’s very easy to open a browser, type “you..” and let auto-predict direct you on your way to watching videos. And the YouTube algorithm is so good that it’ll recommend video after video after video, and in no time, you have spent 3 hours on the site.

   This in particular hurts studying time and time meant to be working on projects that actually matter in the real world…

2. Motivation depletion I haven’t looked for studies to back this up hence all this is personal experience. I have noticed that stopping to watch YouTube while stuck in a YouTube rabbit hole is hard. Extremely hard. You get into a state of being tranced into waiting for the next video to give you a dopamine hit. And even when you manage to snap out of it, you don’t feel particularly excited or motivated to be productive. You are just there, feeling like a wasteman.

   I really don’t know what it is about social media that after using it, you feel sort of depleted and tired. And YouTube was doing that to me.

3. Asking myself what I just watched

   I got into an exercise of asking myself the importance and relevance of what I just watched to my life. Okay, I now know what “Clean Architecture” is but where does that apply to me? It is educational, but relevance is zero.

   The times I really like is when I end up watching a Beta Squad video. Now let me take the time to say this PSA

   If you don’t know what the Beta Squad is, I envy your life and the focus you have in it. Keep it going.

   Anyway, I don’t know what relevance or particular importance it is to me to see Chunkz guess African’s ethnicity based on their language. So why should I watch it? Thing is I don’t do it willingly. I end up there. And that’s just an effect of being tranced into a social media consumption rabbit hole.

Seeing it for what it is

Given the reasons above and how negatively YouTube is beginning to impact my life, I had to call a duck, a duck because it was quacking like a duck. YouTube is making me not focus on the things I want to achieve, it’s wasting time, makes me feel like a wasteman, gets me stuck in 2 hours watching cycles and more importantly, it’s really hacked my dopamine system.

And even the times I justified YouTube as being productive, is it really? And asking myself that question led me to thinking and believing that I left social media, only to get addicted to YouTube, which is a form of social media in itself.

The plan now

Going cold turkey on YouTube until 5 April. (Close to my birthday)

Typing this, I feel unsure I can accomplish this since YouTube is a mainstay of my daily living. But it’s a necessary challenge in which I will question if YouTube really is that important and try to prove to myself that I can live without it.

I am going to be very very bored hence I will end up writing more nonsense like this on my website to not make me go crazy. By the way, if you got this far in the article, could you kindly send a ‘😝’ emoji to my WhatsApp. I’d appreciate it.

Next up on the chopping block? WhatsApp. Coming for you Zuck!