I'm Sick of Algorithms

Giving up YouTube for 2024.

I really am sick and tired of algorithms. The way they suck me in and entice me with content that is hard to stop consuming. Content so well curated that I feel convinced I would have searched for it myself. Hooking me in so I spend as much time online as possible. Robbing me of space to pause and reflect. Robbing me of my attention.

I can’t tell you how much time I have spent spiraling in the vortex of Instagram feeds or YouTube videos, coming out the other side feeling empty and mentally exhausted to boot. Yet hours or even minutes later feeling compelled to do it again. It felt insidiously evil to me, like I was being slowly manipulated without consent.

Time felt scarce. Exactly how Harvard Professor Ashley Whillans defines time confetti. Summarised by Dr. Christian Poensgen from Beyond Productivity,

“As our leisure time gets fractured by digital technology, we use our free time for tiny bits of easy, fast distraction. Thus, our free time only comes in tiny snippets. This time confetti makes us experience time famine, or feeling hungry for time.”

I started seriously thinking about the impact of screen time on my ability to think and focus ever since I read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism, where he brilliantly and humorously articulates,

“The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.”

The first social media tycoon I gave the middle finger to was Mark Zuckerberg back in 2015-16. It was relatively easy. I lost interest once it changed from an actual social network to an advertising machine around the early 2010’s and started using algorithms to push content into my feed without my approval. Check out Rich Roll’s podcast with Frances Haugen if you need a crash course on Facebook’s ills.

Instagram was next. It was much harder. Endless streams of perfect photos of fitness influencers, coffee culture, gardens, architecture, holiday destinations, and people generally showing glamorous lifestyles. It was far more dopamine inducing and addictive. The algorithm worked wonders.

However, as Cal Newport points out, it seemed to me Instagram was the epitome of,

“…how tech companies encourage behavioral addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.”

I eventually gave up posting on Instagram, and sadly used it as a dopamine inducing distraction for a long time. But when I read Digital Minimalism in 2021, I deleted it off my phone and never looked back (well once for about 4 months until I saw the light again…that shit is addictive!).

The final frontier for me is absolutely YouTube. My YouTube use skyrocketed after I fully disassociated from social media. It replaced my craving for distraction. And it was a perfect one. It is an algorithm designed to be as addictive as your standard social media app, but it can be dressed up as a source of self-development, learning, instructional videos etc.

I have watched some incredible content on YouTube. One of my favourite artists Harry Mack came up on YouTube and I love watching his videos. But as much as I love his videos, and other content creators such as Charles Dowding, or Ali Abdaal, I can no longer ignore the pull that YouTube has on my attention.

Every time I head there I end up watching something I didn’t plan on. I see the recommendations and can’t help but follow some. I would watch YouTube in every spare moment. All in the name of learning some cheap productivity hack or journaling prompt. I would waste hours at night watching videos, some great, others just because. I had no control. It increasingly felt empty.

It has taken me a couple of years to realise that this is no different to the time I wasted scrolling Instagram or Facebook. And I am sick of it. I want a deeper life. I don’t want to be addicted to watching content made by other minds. I want to sit in silence. Read more books. Get back to being with my own thoughts. I need to sever the bond.

I experimented with a YouTube sabbatical last July, and it was wonderful. I spent more time on the things that I truly value. But after the month it crept back in and overwhelmed my life again. So this time I am doing it for the whole year. I am 42 days in and feeling great. In fact getting back to writing here on this new publication has stemmed from this challenge. I have replaced perusing YouTube with reading, writing and gardening and it feels wholesome. My mind is calmer. I am excited as to where this will lead.

Stay tuned here with The Well-Adjusted Human.