I’ve noticed YouTube specifically has become more addictive, I never used to be one to sit and scroll for long durations before but I often catch myself spending way too long on shorts now
Even people or older generations seem to be getting sucked in nowadays
I find YouTube is less attractive than a year ago. Ads are more invasive and more difficult to remove. Recommendations skew heavily to the rage-inducing, e.g., I watched one late night comedy sketch making fun of Jordan Peterson and then my feed was full of clips of him spewing his hot trash for weeks.
I gave up on reddit earlier in the year when all the API / sub blackout / forced mod removal stuff was going on.
Freemium apps seem to be pushing ads more and more, which makes me more resistant to using them.
If what I read online is true, the days of investors throwing money at anything tech related are slowing down. Which means some companies that have never had to be profitable before now must find a way to do so. Which means tightening up subscriptions and/or more ads.
I try to spread this tip everywhere i can: If you ever find that you’ve watched one of those videos that fucks up the recommendations, go to your watch history and delete the video. It really works.
I disabled and cleared my history, now I don’t get any recommendations except the ones related to the video I’m currently watching 👍
I’m feeling the opposite lately. YouTube recommendations suck. I often open the app/page for the quick dopamine rush, but few of the recommendations interests me, so I just bounce off. For me, YouTube is mostly for long form content nowadays. Something I can put in the background while cooking/doing dishes.
Instagram is turning more and more like TikTok. Sometimes it recommends me something fun (like cat videos), but often it’s just nonsense. So I bounce off quite quickly there as well.
I feel happy about it.
shorts are designed to be addictive. just don’t use them. otherwise, the platform hasn’t changed, you have
No, shorts are shit and I’m absolutely not sucked in. They try to emulate tik tok so I would say this format simply works for you.
I have a seething hatred for shorts. I refuse to watch anything designed like them on any platform.
That’s part of the idea, isn’t it? They mix normal content with max cringe content because that’s what keeps people watching.
Absolutely. That’s completely not for me, no way, no how.
It does unfortunately. I don’t like it but it absolutely hacks my brain
Would love if there was just an option to disable shorts in the app because I still want to use original youtube
Recently? No, but maybe I’m in my own bubble. I’ve made my phone more boring intentionally. Getting rid of Reddit made me get off my phone a lot more. I really just mindlessly browse Lemmy and Mastodon now, and I run out of content on those.
Shorts made it less addictive, they’re awful to watch and I invariably stop at one.
Perhaps you are experiencing a spike in your own addictive behaviour?
I’m getting bored with my smartphone. Stuff like YouTube I never watch on my phone anyway, but imo YouTube has gotten much worse over time and I barely watch it at all now.
I honestly think that content on YouTube has gotten better and better. Not the systems of YouTube, mind you, just the stuff that people create. But maybe that’s because in the last year or so I’ve been watching and discovering a lot more educational YouTubers (think Tom Scott, Münecat, Real Engineering, etc). among the exclusively funny stuff.
If anything I’m less addicted to my smartphone now that Reddit got rid of the 3rd party apps.
Their algorithm is specifically designed to keep you entertained. Kind of a curse or a gift depending on who you ask. Think the worst cases are children tbh it was insane my first time seeing a tablet kid out in the wild. Faced glued to the screen being walked by their mom
Use revanced and remove shorts
If I were going to use anything I’d probably use piped as a PWA, but the problem is none of them seem to do recommendations and I just get generic content on the front page which doesn’t really interest me
If you find yourself suddenly grasping for more and more time escaping reality consider seeing a psychiatrist.
You could have major depression: it was one of my symptoms.
Jesus Christ lol make a comment about social media on the internet and immediately get diagnosed with depression
It’s not a diagnosis it’s encouragement to see someone about an issue you’ve expressed.
Therapists are gonna be pretty busy then because it’s a good proportion of people I know that have been sucked into this kind of content one way or another more than they’d like
If you find yourself randomly diagnosing strangers with depression consider seeing a psychiatrist.
If you interpret “talk to a doctor” as diagnosing someone consider seeing a dictionary
The problem is that most people aren’t aware that shorts / stories are made to be addictive.
If you keep pointing out to your friends and family how much time / battery they waste watching them they may start to take action though.
I’m well aware how much time I’m wasting, I’ve got a screen time monitor setup and have even gone so far as writing my own script that takes me to youareanidiot.org if I try to open YouTube before 10am but it still didn’t stop me for a good amount of time
I think I might’ve just about kicked it at this point but now I’m spending loads of time scrolling Lemmy and talking to strangers instead which I suppose is marginally better
I have the same problem with YouTube! Between work + school I don’t have free time until 930/10, so I unwind watching documentaries on YouTube and it’s 2-3am before I know it :(
I recently ordered an EReader and if books can’t replace that YouTube urge I might have to go the same route as you and redirect myself after midnight.
I give myself a pass for Lemmy though. It’s not sucking me in, rather I open the site specifically for news for sites that don’t offer RSS feeds. (RSS helps a lot with eliminating the news -> distraction scenario)
…and less effective, and more proprietary, and more homogenous.
Shorts (tiktoks, reels) are designed to do just that, hook you in and keep you scrolling.
It’s like a constant rolling cliffhanger.Has its good sides - not everything can or should be a long format video. However, I think the scale is tipped too much towards shorts recently. There is not enough time in shorts to formulate a proper statement, so they need to stretch over multiple parts.
My biggest dislike is the separation of context - shorts and longs are completely separate in Youtube even by the same creator, and the most popular platform TikTok, doesn’t even support longer videos.
Personally I think the problem is that YouTube promotes them so much harder than normal videos
If you look at the homepage of YouTube on mobile you get one normal video, then a row of ~6 shorts, then another normal video and so on
Much more likely to pique your interest showing you so many more shorts vs videos and once you’re in it’s difficult to break free
TikTok supports up to ten minutes and 15 minute videos for some, but they are far from the norm. A lot more creators are doing videos longer than the old three minute limit though.
I think this is mostly because the multiple parts are annoying and their UI makes it difficult to find subsequent videos unless they are new.
It’s interesting to see them going longer while other services are clambering for the shorts and doing a mostly shitty job of it.
Not really. I never got into mobile gaming, tiktok, reels, shorts, instagram, snapchat etc. so I mainly use my phone for podcasts, maps and browsing lemmy while on toilet. While on my computer I spend 95% of my time on YouTube but I feel like even that has gotten worse lately. I’ve been getting suggestions about videos with like 19 views constantly and no matter how many I mark as “not interested” or “don’t recommend channel” they just keep coming back. Apparently because I like watching TheRunningManZ I must also like every other DayZ streamer that no one has ever heard about.