Downloading Youtube videos to break my phone addiction

Since the pandemic, I’ve developed a Youtube video addiction. I pick up my phone, and suddenly thirty minutes is gone, given mostly to Youtube shorts and unsatisfying videos – internet junk food.

Like most skinner-box style addictions (roulette, tiktok, gacha games, magic the gathering packs) it works because of the inconsistency of rewards. Most videos are junk, but there’s some videos that I find meaningful or entertaining, that I genuinely want to watch.

And so, when Youtube pops up a list of recommended videos, I click on a thumbnail that looks promising, hoping for a good one. It’s usually junk, but I click again, and again, hoping to get that one rare good video.

I’ve tried going cold turkey before, but inevitably I’ll watch some video I’m actually interested in, and then get sucked into the Youtube recommendation spiral.

So I’m going to try something different – only watching videos I’ve directly downloaded onto my computer.

No more recommendations, every video watched is a deliberate choice. My only concern is about how I’ll find new fulfilling videos, but that’s a better problem to have, so I’ll take it.

I’ll post again in a few weeks with the results. Hopefully I actually stick with it!

How to download Youtube Videos?

There’s a program on Github called yt-dlp (itself a fork of the late youtube-dl program which got DMCA’d out of existence), which lets you download Youtube videos to your computer.

Just give it a link, and it’ll download it for your offline viewing pleasure.

User Beware:

Depending on your country this may be illegal, and it’s def against Youtube’s TOS even though it’s what your browser/phone does anytime you stream a video.

In practice, they only really go after people that host a version of the tool for others to use, but, still, weigh the risk.

Downsides

The biggest downside to me is that if everybody downloaded all their videos, creators wouldn’t get paid.

If you’re doing this regularly, I’d recommend trying to donate directly to your favorite creators, through Patreon or other means.

Inspirations

Ironically, I was inspired to do this by a Youtube video by HGModernism:

In it, she breaks down Skinner box style addiction, and her own approaches to breaking the dopamine cycle.

The main piece of advice is: after every 5 minutes of scrolling, take a break and reflect on your time. Was it worth it? If so, keep watching. If not… maybe stop!

Also, don’t use anything with infinite scrolling.

Highly recommend downloading the video, and visiting her Patreon!