It’s been 4 days without YouTube now. I can’t believe I’ve managed to do it because in the last 7-8 years, I don’t think there’s ever been even a single day when I haven’t checked YouTube. Even when I was sick in April last year, I think I surfed YouTube whenever I felt a little better.

This has brought into sharp focus, why I used to watch YouTube. I think the main reason was to distract myself and kill time. Whenever I felt any negativity, I would go on YouTube and half an hour would fly by without me having to deal with that negativity. Then I’d try to deal with it and if I failed, I’d go back on YouTube and spend another hour or two on it. And once half a day was gone without doing much work, I’d spend the rest of the day watching YouTube and not allowing the negative thoughts in the background to rise up.

When I got sick of YouTube, only then would I go over to Netflix or some other platform. It was usually either YouTube or a live sporting event, that I preferred. Whenever I was on some other platform, I always ended up rewatching content I had already seen, instead of trying something new. On Netflix, I was either binging Friends or The Big Bang Theory. Once I was done with one of them, I’d restart the other series. And every now and then I’d go on Disney+ to watch How I Met Your Mother.

I think this is an important key to how I’ve been using content to stay distracted. Watching a new show or movie requires effort. You have to get into the story and the world that’s being created. And if the world seemed like just another arrangement of similar elements, it got even harder to get into it. But rewatching familiar content is like getting under the duvet in an old soft t-shirt during a rainstorm and falling asleep. It’s super comfortable. I don’t have to do much thinking. I can let my mind drift. I get to distract myself while also allowing enough bandwidth to daydream on the side.

YouTube has a similar effect as rewatching old shows because the videos don’t feel like they require a big commitment of attention. I usually got into one topic and binged multiple videos on it. You can watch hundreds of van conversions and you don’t even have to pay attention to most of the video. It’s like a white noise machine but with video as well as sound.

I think this is what I find the strangest about our modern times. Since we have access to endless video content, we’ve developed a need to always have some video going on. If there’s no video playing anywhere, suddenly life feels boring and uneventful. And it’s not even that we want to be highly entertained; we just want something to occupy a part of our mind. Maybe it’s the part that asks us uncomfortable questions.

The funny thing is that now that YouTube is gone, I don’t feel that strong an urge to watch Netflix either. I am daydreaming more and I am finding myself with more time than I’m used to having. Days feel longer somehow.

Cover Photo by Nabil Saleh on Unsplash