YouTube Addiction
I successfully reduced time wasted on YouTube by making the website much less appealing. I unsubscribed from everything, emptied all of my playlists, unliked every video I liked, deleted my comments, and disabled my YouTube history. I also turned off ad blocking for YouTube.<p>Now the algorithm isn&#x27;t targeting me enough to serve attention-grabbing content. And the time it takes to get gratification with pre-video ads has broken up my habit of clicking through videos.<p>It&#x27;s interesting to note that YouTube is still surprisingly good at suggesting relevant content to me, even on the home page. But much, much worse now than how it used to be.<p>If there was some way to slow down the internet speed back to around 1mbps, I think that it would cure a lot of internet addiction without much effort from the addicted. The habit-forming craving -&gt; action -&gt; random reward&#x2F;outcome loop has to happen quickly for the habit to be formed. If it becomes craving -&gt; action -&gt;1 0-20 second delay -&gt; random outcome, I think the brain soon decides it&#x27;s going to take too much effort and time (maybe hours) to get the favorable outcome, and other things are better for a dopamine boost - like exercise (10 minutes of work and then the dopamine rush is guaranteed).<p>The same thing worked for me with food - I ended my snacking habit by not keeping unhealthy food in the house. It is just too much effort to go to a convenience store (10 minutes) for a little 10-second dopamine boost.<p>The brain is good at this algebra. An outcome&#x27;s correctly or incorrectly estimated value needs to be higher than the effort to get that outcome. Otherwise, the effort becomes unappealing.