HACKER Q&A
📣 youtubeaddict

I'm addicted to YouTube, what to do?


I don't know what to do anymore. I'm addicted to youtube, just spent ~6 hours watching an assortment of videos, starting with reactions and ending with people scamming scammers. Having to work remotely has made my job even harder, now I can watch youtube without someone noticing. Every morning at the standup call I have to think of new excuses and invent things that I haven't actually done.

I have tried leechblock, but then I just install a new browser. I have a firefox, chomimum and and the latest addition Brave.

Is there a way I could make watching youtube harder for myself. Nothing seems to work. And it al starts with: "I will just watch this one videos..." and few hours later I'm so frustrated that I will just continue watching because I don't want to face the consequences.

  👤 cameron_b Accepted Answer ✓
Change your local dns, either your machines host file or a Pi-hole, and redirect YouTube to your work ticket queue.

Give the password to your pi-hole to a friend, girlfriend, enemy, etc and have them set to something new.

Covenant Eyes is a web browsing accountability platform that can designate an accountability partner to review your browsing, if you want to take it that far.

👤 __warlord__
I'm in the same boat.

I tried using pi-hole and nextdns but didn't worked for me because _I knew_ where to change back the settings, also, having multiple devices didn't help as well.

My current setup is a bit unconventional but has worked for me, in mac os there is an app called self-restrained, in windows there is an app called focal-filter that blocks websites that cannot be unblocked them after an X amount of time even if you reboot, I deleted the apps from my phone and now when I have the "urge" to watch a video I just do 10 push-ups.

You could also try to 1) "pause your youtube history", 2) unsubscribe from ALL your channels and 3) use an extension that removes everything from youtube (recommendations, history, etc).

Also, Ironically, I found a youtube video that helped me a bit more with this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-moW9jvvMr4

And the last one, I just worked on my will power and make a promise to myself to stop.

I wish you the best, Youtube is a really bad website when there is not enough self control.

👤 someonehere
I envy you. I can’t find content that interests me. I just purged 20 channels I added over 2020 that I no longer have interest in.

I’m stuck with some theme park and cooking content channels.

👤 vuciv1
Getting New Pipe (android) really kicked my addixtion. Its youtube but no recommendations or ads :)

I barely even use it anymore