YouTube Addiction and the Infallibility of Internet Dogmatism

There is an unparalleled type of excitement the moment you see an enticing video in the recommended tab of YouTube. Is it the thumbnail, or the title? Your mind starts to go wild with the possibilities of what it could be, you are feverish with anticipation. The dopamine rush the moment before you click is usually greater than the experience of watching the video itself.

I could probably have a Phd in watching YouTube since I’ve spent 100s of hours, if not years, of my life feeling like a ghost trapped in a shell watching all the videos that were recommended to me. I actually ask myself continually “Why am I watching this?” without feeling the power to stop watching. There is something powerful behind the technology that has the ability to override our biological mechanisms of inhibition. YouTube knew how to hook me, like a fly attracted to the light.

I wanted to stop, but lacked the willpower to actually exit the website or the app. Something deep down in me groaned with disappointment at having lost the war once again, as if stealing my time and attention were beyond my own mental faculties to resist. Even to the conscious consumer, something like YouTube can pose addictive tendencies that are extremely difficult to overcome.

In a certain sense, the YouTube algorithm knows more about people than they may know about themselves. It’s able to predict exactly what they want to watch before they become consciously aware of it. There is a subtle communication that goes on between the algorithm and the subconscious, an agreement of sorts, that leaves the conscious observer trapped and unable to escape.

Every free moment is stolen from existence; when you go to the bathroom, when you are going to bed at night, sitting in the passenger seat in a car; these are all dedicated to getting the next dopamine fix. Give me another hit.

Time doesn’t exist in the ether of YouTube. One can start by innocuously searching for videos of dogs and end up watching people shaving their legs with sharp knives hours later. Getting to that point is like sleepwalking, having no recollection of how one got there in the first place.

What is this concept of losing a sense of time? In most instances, people refer to losing time when they are doing work that they are deeply engaged with and find meaningful. Cal Newport refers to this concept as Deep Work.

Losing a sense of time can also refer to something so enjoyable as to negate time. We use the expression: “Wow, time went by so fast” in the proverbial context of referring to things that we enjoyed so much that our temporal sense of awareness was overridden by our attention.

But can we call the time spent watching YouTube (or other social media) necessarily enjoyable? That depends on whether you are passively or actively watching YouTube videos. Actively watching implies that you are watching videos with intention, like looking up how to fix a kitchen sink and stopping after you have attained the desired information.

Passively watching refers to the pattern of losing a sense of time without realizing where your attention has gone. This is the type of behavior that I am referring to when YouTube is able to steal attention without the willpower to resist.

You promise yourself to stop. “This is the last time,” you say as you delete the app from your phone. But the next moment of boredom that presents itself is another opportunity to get your quick fix. It’s literally as easy as going to the app store and re-downloading the application again.

Have you ever had a weird question go through your head that you really wanted to know the answer to? Maybe the sinking of the Titanic was an inside job perpetrated by the Germans for world domination. Let’s look it up.

All of a sudden you find myriad of videos supporting your suspicion. Well thought-out research goes into video content undeniably proving that the titanic was in fact sunk by a German U-Boot and not a drifting iceberg. You become obsessed, and start to tell your friends about it, becoming as articulate as someone with a PhD in 20th century conspiracy theories.

It’s not that this theory may seem absurd or outdated, but that any belief or curiosity will be supported by hundreds, if not thousands, of videos presenting seemingly insurmountable evidence to prove that your existing beliefs or suspicions are true.

Self-doubt becomes self-aggrandizement, and uncertainty becomes a contrarian truth. Our need to be unique culminates in the cult of ideas that circulates online. No matter how much of an outcast you may be in real life, there is always a tribe waiting for you somewhere online to reinforce your new identity and beliefs.

The cult of titanic iceberg deniers could gain traction and start to grow in number, slowly convincing others that the idea is not as farfetched as it sounds. Evolutionary Psychologist Gad Saad argues in The Parasitic Mind that intelligent people often become infected by bad ideas. This is the problem with those who eloquently preach their own truth online, seeming so convincing as to attract new followers.

What’s so deceiving in the age of internet cultism is that it’s no longer as easy as spotting the tin-foil hat fanatic screaming “The END IS NEAR”- the person who harbors such surreptitious beliefs could be your next door neighbor you wave to every morning.

Our best friends and family become estranged from us over the war of ideas that has intensified through the age of mass communication. It’s one thing to go on an internet forum and see these ideas circulated, but it’s another to have a charismatic YouTuber looking in the camera and speaking to you in your language.

“I also used to believe that the titanic hit an iceberg, but as soon as I realized it was a German plot orchestrated by the Rothschild family, it made sense to me how they were able to amass so much wealth and support Israel. This is why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.” Who can argue with the infallibility of that logic?

When we can’t agree on what is true anymore, a society will tear itself apart at the seams. We can no longer distinguish our greatest enemies from our greatest allies, or fellow countrymen from invaders. The circulation of ideas online, whether over YouTube or another medium, is empowering on the individual level but detrimental to a society struggling to form a coherent sense of identity.

There is a sense of humility in being proven wrong. It encourages you not only to think more critically about your own ideas, but it also to grow beyond pre-existing beliefs that harm others. Unfortunately, critical thinking is not a core curriculum in most schools, and we are left with a growing number of young adults who rather be told they are right than harming them with the denial of their unique beliefs. The infallibility of the individual in the age of mass communication produces a generation of thinkers who believe they are truly impervious to counter-arguments, especially when living a life in an echo chamber.

Maybe you’re never getting your way in life, and people put you down. The internet provides a solution to your woes. You can never be wrong, you never are wrong. You are right and always have been, there is no other way that this could go.

It’s undeniable that technology ushers in advantages and disadvantages by allowing people to communicate at a macro level. Some might smile at how absurd a theory about the Titanic being sunken by Germans may sound, and others may find solace in it.

We are addicted to information that solves the need for individual truth, like Skinner’s pigeons, we are constantly clicking away asking for more.

I’ve taken drastic measures over the years to mitigate my addiction to YouTube, going as far as deleting it from my phone and limiting access to it on the computer. Instead of fighting my addiction, I removed the stimulus in order to feel in control of my attention.

Like other types of addiction, YouTube cannot simply be replaced by another addictive stimulus, such as pornography or excessive smoking. The only way to truly overcome an addiction is abstinence, and abstinence for four weeks has been seen as sufficient in studies examining alcoholics going through withdrawal.

However, addiction comes in many different forms of online behavior. One of the most common is a new phenomenon known as parasocial relationships, the types of relationships that fans may form with online personalities, whether over Twitch, Youtube, OnlyFans, or other platforms. I’m somewhat agnostic as to whether an online relationship can truly satisfy our innate need for intimacy, or whether these online simulacrums are mere attempts at replicating a real encounter with a human being.

Ultimately, the desire to feel connection in an increasingly isolated world drives us to the point of worshipping online personalities as the new Gods of the 21st century.

Yet the perfection of technology combined with the imperfection of human nature cannot create a world where we rely on digital relationships to assuage our social woes.

The greatest problems of the 21st century will not be digital, but rather human.