How to avoid YouTube addiction?

Hi brother!
I think the key is having an engaging hobby which keeps you away from your phone/computer (like running, drawing etc.) You can also try some apps that monitor your phone addiction ( i recommend ''Yout Hour'') I hope you will overcome it good luck!

 

To me it's not about being addicted to Youtube. It's just a time killer, and I have a lot of time. I've often had the mindset that I have nothing better to do so I'm just stuck watching stupid videos, but in reality I have many things I can do. Studying is a good replacement. The problem is that it is boring and doesn't directly benefit you. Especially if you have a whole day of free time, it's hard to find motivation to study, cause you're stuck in the thought that you just have to study and there's nothing else to do.

I advice you to start doing a lot of different, versatile activites. Start shifting things up.

 

Youtube is a total time black hole for sure, I still spend too much time on it. To control it I have this extension called "Mind the time" that tells me how much time I spend on each website and another called "LeechBlock" to block it. I can unlock it in 10min intervals so I do not lose myself in it.

 

Can you please tell us how exactly these hobbies will retract us from youtube (or other apps)
Lol I came back from 2 hours of exercise and I'm still on youtube for the whole afternoon
I don't have a job and my classes are a few hours each week. It's not getting me occupied

 

Maybe understanding why youtube is so addictive might help. First of all it's easy, it's instant gratification. Takes many hours to make a video and only one click with the mouse to watch it.
You also have these mean algorithms giving you video suggestions you would likely want to watch, based on mathematics and the preferences of thousands of users. This is one of many reasons why people get stuck on this website.

 

It's not an addiction, you would not get cold sweats if you went for a trip to a foreing country and you didn't get to use YouTube for weeks, you wouldn't even remember about YouTube. I used to spent even more hours than you do daily, and then I deleted my account, I created 3 new ones, one where I only watch healthy recipes, one for calisthenic videos, and one for japanese learning videos. I want my suggestions feed to stay focused on those topics, so I avoid any other kind of video, and thus YouTube became way less interesting, and I started to play Arena of Valor more frequently, read NoFap posts more frequently. The thing is that we need to be doing something, and YouTube pleases that need for doing something, if you remove it you'll move to something else, and if you endure and remove any non-productive habits, you'll end up hooked to doing productive work, be it painting, building stuff, reading, whatever. If you didn't have the Internet you would still do something, because we don't like laying down looking at the ceiling, so all you need to do is to redirect your habits into productive ones. Easier said than done, since we usually don't like changes either...
If you can't rely on yourself, I suggest you move YT app into any folder, and you turn off the staying logged in and the remembering user data options, so whenever you have to access YT you'll have to go to that folder and type your user name and password, so it'll be such a pain in the ass that you might prefer doing something else instead.

 

It is not an "real" addiction but it is pretty bad habit for sure.

 

YouTube releases dopamine because of the endless novelty of things that you can watch. The same thing happens when you scroll on facebook or instagram (or indeed a porn site); the brain is going into a dopamine overdrive because everything is new. Unfortunately it also leads to dopamine desensitization, so instead of it motivating you to do something that is a little more time-consuming, you can click a button and get the hit.

Last year I deleted all social media that I had an account with; facebook, instagram and snapchat, and I got to say, it has been a very good move. But I too notice now how YouTube operates in a similar way to keep you on the site. Unfortunately, YouTube is one of the most useful places to get information from, but it's good to have time spent away from it.