Do you know how long you watch videos on YouTube every day? You have probably been on it longer than you think. This is how you find out if you are addicted to YouTube.
Tackling YouTube addiction is getting easier
YouTube is great fun, of course, but not good for productivity. The app is very well put together, so you can tap one movie after another. Before you realize it, you can easily watch hours of videos.
Breaking an addiction starts with insight, which is why there is a screen with statistics in the YouTube app: ‘Watched time’. Here you can see how many minutes you watch videos every day. Moreover, you can immediately do something about your YouTube addiction by setting a timer, for example. You will receive a notification when you are about to exceed your daily limit.
Here’s how you can see how much time you’ve spent on YouTube:
- Go to the settings menu by pressing on your account at the top right;
- Tap on ‘Time watched’;
- Here you can see how many minutes you watched this day, yesterday and last week, plus an average.
Does this scare you, or is it not too bad? In the first case, you can immediately activate a timer by moving the slider to the right. You can also have the app remind you to take a break from time to time.
This is what other tech companies do against addiction
More and more tech companies are working to combat addiction. For example, Google, owner of YouTube, previously released Digital Wellbeing for Android phones. Apple is also trying to tackle iPhone addiction through, for example, ‘Screen Time’ in iOS 12.
Not only do you see how much time you spend on your phone every day, but you also get some tools to bring this number down. Want to know more about Screen Time? Check out this video: