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I block shorts on youtube, I don't care for short form content. Give me those hour long analysis type videos. Without shorts youtube still does a rather poor job at recommending new stuff.
That being said, shorts are being more addictive by nature since the barrier of entry to watch 'one more' is so low. If you engage with them on any app, you will waste more time on your phone.
How do you disable shorts?
Firefox has an addon called "Hide shorts on youtube". I don't use any other browser on any device.
I'm finding it to be the opposite. All content on YouTube and social media, including lemmy, seems to just be endless reposts of the same limited list of topics and memes.
Its become boring to the point where I'm just going back to specific interest forums websites for content.
People talk about how good algorithms are now, but they can't figure out anything I actually want to watch nowadays
Totally agree, barely go on YouTube anymore because garbage videos are being pushed in my face, and hate browsing channels because of Shorts, and all the same sponsor segments everyone has, just boring.
YouTube Shorts doesnβt even work properly for me. At least half the videos, that are suggested to me, Iβve already seen multiple times before. Boring, as you said. Iβve found myself staying off of social media or news sites more in the last couple of weeks. Newsβll make me depressive, social media bores me. Then again, more time for hobbies!
Iβm 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 itβs just nonsense. So I bounce off quite quickly there as well.
I feel happy about it.
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 π
shorts are designed to be addictive. just don't use them. otherwise, the platform hasn't changed, you have
Shorts are new-ish to the platform. Like others that saw the success of TikTok (e.g., facebook with their reels, presumably instagram has something similar) they pumped out their own version to better trap people on the platform.
Same idea as ever but more addictive than before.
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?
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.
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
Smartphones are too stimulating for young children. Their brains are wired to really take in the lights, sounds and interactiveness of it all. This is kinda dangerous because this is also when a lot of learning is going on, they will develop socially based on the content they consume.
I've heard that some toddlers/babies recently began mimicing the action of pulling a mobile device from a pocket and looking down at the screen. They've seen others do it so often that they are learning it as a nearly instinctual action.
If anything I'm less addicted to my smartphone now that Reddit got rid of the 3rd party apps.
No? The opposite of anything, I consume media much more on my TV, PC and via my ereader recently.
My smartphone has mostly been relegated to a communications device the recent 3-6 months as I've lost the will to try to go through media on a needlessly tiny screen. Luckily though, I don't have a commute any more. But when I did, I read books on the ereader during the train travel instead of being on the phone.
It's the opposite for me. I never consume shorts/tiktoks because they simply don't interest me. Most of the things I watch are very in-depth (Flaw Peacock's video essays are between 5-7 hours a piece).
Since I almost exclusively go for this long form content, I feel I have a lot more "say" in what I consume online.
If you can stay at this side of the fence concerning short form content you'll be golden.
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.
Big tech writes the equivalent of digital heroin.
The longer they can keep you on their platforms,
the more they can data-farm you,
the more data they have on you,
the more they can sell about you / earn on you.
Detox yourself from your bad heroin addiction,
by switching to fair FOSS (Free Open Source Software) alternatives.
E.g. Use Invidious, Grayjay or NewPipe instead of YouTube.
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.
I've noticed the recommendations suck now. It that's their attempt at sucking me in?
Idk I am pretty addicted, but it's like Netflix where I spend more time selecting than watching nowadays.
Kinda looking forward to Google making me fight for ad free YouTube. There is a 0% chance I will continue to use YouTube if there are any ads in my way. Even a stationary suggestion in my feed? Nope, fuck that. As soon as revanced is toast I'll leave YouTube like I did reddit.
But the recommendations are God awful now.
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
YouTube just annoys me lately because the search function is so shitty. I go looking for videos of drag queens and they try and get me to watch Madonna videos.
I feel the exact opposite about you tube. I feel like there is nothing interesting to watch any more unless one of my follows post a new video
I've never found anything about those short video platforms appealing, yes there's some creative people making great content on them but everything else is pretty much garbage.
My phone gets maybe an hour of use on a regular day and most of that is searching for music to listen to on Tidal.
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.
Lately I've been more conscious of my decisions to watch trash on you tube. You watch a few traffic cam videos and pretty soon that's half your feed. So I'm finding myself thinking twice before clicking.
Shorts I mostly avoid because I feel that feature is toxic clickbait.
It's been the opposite, I feel like I have to put in huge amounts of effort just to find something interesting. Most of the YouTubers I follow barely post anything anymore.
Not really.
Just stay away from garbage content like TikTok and shorts. But you can't blame your shitty media consumption on the smartphone.
You can't blame 100% of your media consumption on the snartphone but I think it is counter-productive to treat it as not a factor in media addictions. Smartphones made media and content more accessible than ever, especially as mobile data rates got cheaper.
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.
It seems to also be a switching task issue in our minds. These changes of states takes more effort than playing the next video does or just keeping on what we are doing. It's so much easier for us to keep playing the digital dopamine slot machine that, TikTok, instagram reels, Facebook and YouTube short videos provide.
From a business sense they want to keep your attention, from a biology sense we are safe and don't see a need to move with the random rewards another quick video offers.
It's amazing how well they have refined getting and keeping our attention. We also get rewarded with dopamine from the anticipation of the next story or short video. It gets we don't even really need the next video, just the anticipation is enough to reward us with more dopamine.
I've read doing a simple reverse mental countdown of 5-4-3-2-1 blast off helps us switch gears from another part of the brain. It can also help us get out of bed or off the couch.
I just avoid shorts or reels or whatever personally. They're short and engaging making it easy to lose track of time.
But yeah you're 100% right my parents (late 50s) have started doing it a lot. I've noticed a lot of teenagers do as well.
My wife's attention span has gone to shit thanks to short form videos like that. From vine to ticktock to whatever Facebook version she uses now, I've gotten to the point where if she picks up her phone while we're talking, I'll just stop talking until she looks up. If we're whatching a new movie or show, I'll pause it until she puts the phone down.
Sometimes it takes her several minutes to realize what she's doing.
I'm so fucking tired of having to pause things to explain what we just watched because she was too busy watching some asshole drop a glass of milk onto the floor for a joke. I'm tired of having to repeat myself because she "needed stimulation" and decided the conversation we ~~are~~ were actively having isn't good enough.
So now I just don't bother. If she's interested, she'll ask. If it's important, I'll tell her to put the phone down because it's important.