The Problem

When you watch charged, bright, emotionally provocative, hyper-clear, fast, sexual, scary, aesthetically pleasing videos – your body releases dopamine in response to all of it. Because it reads this type of content as maximally valuable – it could potentially help you survive and reproduce, and on top of that it requires zero effort, it's guaranteed and instant. Perfect.

The problem is that this wears down the dopamine system – the one responsible for feeling motivated.

When you regularly consume this kind of super-stimulating content, your body gets used to a certain dopamine baseline. It learns to get motivated only by hyper-exaggerated stimuli – and to ignore everything else.

So if you spend enough time in a super-stimulus environment, you only feel motivated when the reward is easy, instant, and guaranteed.

You can see this clearly in people who watch a lot of porn: over time, what used to work stops working. It no longer stimulates – literally, no arousal, no motivation – and you need something even more extreme just to get the same response.

The problem is that super-stimuli like this don't exist in real life.

In real life, results aren't easy – they take effort. Results are risky and not guaranteed. Results take time and are not instant. Unlike the passive consumption environment you spend so much time in and unconsciously adapt to.

So your body has gotten used to easy, guaranteed, and instant. And now let's say you want to learn a new skill.

Not only will forcing yourself to study feel hard – the actual process of learning will feel unbearable. Because learning doesn't hit like TikToks, Reels, and Shorts that you've gotten so used to.

Real things start to feel grey and boring.

Learning – something that could genuinely pay off – will feel like torture. Meanwhile mindlessly scrolling will feel like home. That's what it means to adapt to a world that doesn't exist.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The Solution

If the body adapts to what you do regularly – then you need to replace the actions that lead to hyperstimulation with ones that don't. And over time, the system recalibrates.

Like when someone starts going to the gym consistently and the body adapts – builds muscle, the nervous system adjusts to mild discomfort, and so on.

Same thing here. You just start doing certain things regularly and stop doing others – and the body has no choice but to adapt.

Think of someone who eats a lot of salty food. Over time food loses its taste and they need more and more salt – that's a direct sign the receptors have adapted to that level and need time to reset.

I know it's a bit of an overused term at this point, but what I described above is basically a dopamine detox. That's the foundation of it.

The Problem

When you watch charged, bright, emotionally provocative, hyper-clear, fast, sexual, scary, aesthetically pleasing videos – your body releases dopamine in response to all of it. Because it reads this type of content as maximally valuable – it could potentially help you survive and reproduce, and on top of that it requires zero effort, it's guaranteed and instant. Perfect.

The problem is that this wears down the dopamine system – the one responsible for feeling motivated.

When you regularly consume this kind of super-stimulating content, your body gets used to a certain dopamine baseline. It learns to get motivated only by hyper-exaggerated stimuli – and to ignore everything else.

So if you spend enough time in a super-stimulus environment, you only feel motivated when the reward is easy, instant, and guaranteed.

You can see this clearly in people who watch a lot of porn: over time, what used to work stops working. It no longer stimulates – literally, no arousal, no motivation – and you need something even more extreme just to get the same response.

The problem is that super-stimuli like this don't exist in real life.

In real life, results aren't easy – they take effort. Results are risky and not guaranteed. Results take time and are not instant. Unlike the passive consumption environment you spend so much time in and unconsciously adapt to.

So your body has gotten used to easy, guaranteed, and instant. And now let's say you want to learn a new skill.

Not only will forcing yourself to study feel hard – the actual process of learning will feel unbearable. Because learning doesn't hit like TikToks, Reels, and Shorts that you've gotten so used to.

Real things start to feel grey and boring.

Learning – something that could genuinely pay off – will feel like torture. Meanwhile mindlessly scrolling will feel like home. That's what it means to adapt to a world that doesn't exist.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The Solution

If the body adapts to what you do regularly – then you need to replace the actions that lead to hyperstimulation with ones that don't. And over time, the system recalibrates.

Like when someone starts going to the gym consistently and the body adapts – builds muscle, the nervous system adjusts to mild discomfort, and so on.

Same thing here. You just start doing certain things regularly and stop doing others – and the body has no choice but to adapt.

Think of someone who eats a lot of salty food. Over time food loses its taste and they need more and more salt – that's a direct sign the receptors have adapted to that level and need time to reset.

I know it's a bit of an overused term at this point, but what I described above is basically a dopamine detox. That's the foundation of it.

The Problem

When you watch charged, bright, emotionally provocative, hyper-clear, fast, sexual, scary, aesthetically pleasing videos – your body releases dopamine in response to all of it. Because it reads this type of content as maximally valuable – it could potentially help you survive and reproduce, and on top of that it requires zero effort, it's guaranteed and instant. Perfect.

The problem is that this wears down the dopamine system – the one responsible for feeling motivated.

When you regularly consume this kind of super-stimulating content, your body gets used to a certain dopamine baseline. It learns to get motivated only by hyper-exaggerated stimuli – and to ignore everything else.

So if you spend enough time in a super-stimulus environment, you only feel motivated when the reward is easy, instant, and guaranteed.

You can see this clearly in people who watch a lot of porn: over time, what used to work stops working. It no longer stimulates – literally, no arousal, no motivation – and you need something even more extreme just to get the same response.

The problem is that super-stimuli like this don't exist in real life.

In real life, results aren't easy – they take effort. Results are risky and not guaranteed. Results take time and are not instant. Unlike the passive consumption environment you spend so much time in and unconsciously adapt to.

So your body has gotten used to easy, guaranteed, and instant. And now let's say you want to learn a new skill.

Not only will forcing yourself to study feel hard – the actual process of learning will feel unbearable. Because learning doesn't hit like TikToks, Reels, and Shorts that you've gotten so used to.

Real things start to feel grey and boring.

Learning – something that could genuinely pay off – will feel like torture. Meanwhile mindlessly scrolling will feel like home. That's what it means to adapt to a world that doesn't exist.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The Solution

If the body adapts to what you do regularly – then you need to replace the actions that lead to hyperstimulation with ones that don't. And over time, the system recalibrates.

Like when someone starts going to the gym consistently and the body adapts – builds muscle, the nervous system adjusts to mild discomfort, and so on.

Same thing here. You just start doing certain things regularly and stop doing others – and the body has no choice but to adapt.

Think of someone who eats a lot of salty food. Over time food loses its taste and they need more and more salt – that's a direct sign the receptors have adapted to that level and need time to reset.

I know it's a bit of an overused term at this point, but what I described above is basically a dopamine detox. That's the foundation of it.

The Problem

When you watch charged, bright, emotionally provocative, hyper-clear, fast, sexual, scary, aesthetically pleasing videos – your body releases dopamine in response to all of it. Because it reads this type of content as maximally valuable – it could potentially help you survive and reproduce, and on top of that it requires zero effort, it's guaranteed and instant. Perfect.

The problem is that this wears down the dopamine system – the one responsible for feeling motivated.

When you regularly consume this kind of super-stimulating content, your body gets used to a certain dopamine baseline. It learns to get motivated only by hyper-exaggerated stimuli – and to ignore everything else.

So if you spend enough time in a super-stimulus environment, you only feel motivated when the reward is easy, instant, and guaranteed.

You can see this clearly in people who watch a lot of porn: over time, what used to work stops working. It no longer stimulates – literally, no arousal, no motivation – and you need something even more extreme just to get the same response.

The problem is that super-stimuli like this don't exist in real life.

In real life, results aren't easy – they take effort. Results are risky and not guaranteed. Results take time and are not instant. Unlike the passive consumption environment you spend so much time in and unconsciously adapt to.

So your body has gotten used to easy, guaranteed, and instant. And now let's say you want to learn a new skill.

Not only will forcing yourself to study feel hard – the actual process of learning will feel unbearable. Because learning doesn't hit like TikToks, Reels, and Shorts that you've gotten so used to.

Real things start to feel grey and boring.

Learning – something that could genuinely pay off – will feel like torture. Meanwhile mindlessly scrolling will feel like home. That's what it means to adapt to a world that doesn't exist.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

The Solution

If the body adapts to what you do regularly – then you need to replace the actions that lead to hyperstimulation with ones that don't. And over time, the system recalibrates.

Like when someone starts going to the gym consistently and the body adapts – builds muscle, the nervous system adjusts to mild discomfort, and so on.

Same thing here. You just start doing certain things regularly and stop doing others – and the body has no choice but to adapt.

Think of someone who eats a lot of salty food. Over time food loses its taste and they need more and more salt – that's a direct sign the receptors have adapted to that level and need time to reset.

I know it's a bit of an overused term at this point, but what I described above is basically a dopamine detox. That's the foundation of it.

Youtube must have been the worst addiction I’ve ever had.

Th YouTube became that nectar for me, that cocoon where people lived in the movie "The Matrix."

YouTube was my matrix – I'd go in and nothing else mattered. All problems disappeared in that moment, no pain. No need for friends anymore, why bother when there's MrBeast and endless entertainment? No need for smart people around you, when you can just watch pop-science videos? No need to act yourself, take risks, put in effort and time, when you can just watch others do it?

A habit formed. Whenever I felt bored, anxious, sad – I'd open YouTube, distract myself, and the problems would magically disappear.

Not only was I numbing my problems just to face them again later – which meant more pain and more escape – I also developed a habit of passive information consumption.

I'd open YouTube to escape the pain, and those damn algorithms would pick what I watched next. I'd mindlessly click on whatever thumbnail caught my eye and just... watch.

And that recommendation feed – that's the real evil. It just pushes you to consume without thinking. It plays on your animal instincts. You get shown the most clickbaity, the most provocative, the most outrageous thumbnails and titles – it's pure manipulation, and we do it to ourselves voluntarily.

And that kind of information bingeing doesn't pass without consequences. I constantly had brain fog – no clarity, a flood of thoughts, images, random sounds. Absolute chaos in my head. My head was literally buzzing.

And when you finally snap out of that haze, the problems are still there. I just forgot about them for a while, and reality hits twice as hard. You want to escape again.

Broken sleep, because you don't want to face reality. Falling asleep to some video, waking up feeling like garbage, not remembering anything from the day before. I developed digital dementia – living day to day, moment to moment, retaining nothing.

I was like that neighbor who comes home from the factory and turns on the TV first thing – just to forget everything. To avoid facing the horror of reality. More comfort, less pain. Except in a very, very amplified form. And that's not a figure of speech – that was my actual reality.

YouTube itself isn't bad – it's just a tool. A tool with a heavy bias toward superficiality and harm, designed to maximize consumption. Actively engaging with a lot of material is hard, so passive consumption – just watching – is extremely profitable for them and extremely damaging for you.

YouTube is a double-edged sword. You can use it for good or use it against yourself. But by default, YouTube is configured for passive consumption – with its recommendations, with a complete absence of any ethical approach to information.

And that's the problem. YouTube has genuinely useful content – lectures, tutorials, courses, interesting video essays – but at the same time it pushes you toward passively consuming random garbage, and most of the time that's exactly what you end up doing.

But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It doesn't. And here's what I did:

I started with willpower (telling myself I'd use it less) – didn't work.

Then I blocked YouTube completely so I wouldn't watch it – but I'd come back after a day or two.

Then I used browser extensions to hide all the addictive mechanics (remove recommendations, gray out thumbnails, hide comments, disable autoplay) – but eventually I'd just turn the extension off and go back to my old habits.

So I realized I couldn't rely on myself and I needed a system I couldn't change. An environment I'd have to adapt to, because I couldn't alter it.

And here's what I came up with:

Block YouTube completely. Make using it impossible, or at least very inconvenient.

Then, I vibe-coded a simple YouTube player – a site where I can paste a video link and watch it.

To find videos, I search directly in the browser.

That's it. That's the whole thing. After this, my usage dropped from 6 hours a day to 20–30 minutes.

YouTube stopped being a toy I play with when I'm bored, sad, or feeling low – and became a tool I use when I actually need it, to watch what I actually want, not what the algorithm feeds me.

And that barrier – having to decide what you want to watch and go find the link – kills all impulsive behavior. Because now watching something requires thinking, and thinking feels like effort, so the motivation to mindlessly consume just drops.

Friction kills addiction. Impulsive behavior only survives in an environment without obstacles. Look at how easy it is to get lost in YouTube, how low the barrier to entry is – same with TikTok, same with Instagram. It's designed that way on purpose. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it.

This was my solution for YouTube – one I've been living with for over a year now, and it works beautifully for me.

Ask questions if anything isn't clear, and share your own solutions.

I have a suspicion that passive consumption leads to memory loss

The Problem

The problem with passive consumption is that the brain gets used to not storing information, because there's always too much of it, always in abundance. The result: a habit of not analyzing information + brain fog, and in the long run – memory problems.

I think memory problems arise through the "use it or lose it" principle. Meaning if you don't use something in your daily life, it just starts to atrophy – like muscles – and the same might be true for memory that you're not using actively enough if you spend most of your free time passively consuming information.

There are studies showing that people who regularly watched TV passively after work have a smaller hippocampus and less grey matter in the part of the brain associated with memory.

–

If you think about it, the problem of passive consumption is actually quite specific in its conditions, because for it to appear you need: a lot of free time + a lot of easily accessible information, and only once a habit forms (through repetition) do the consequences start showing up.

Why does it happen in the first place? I think it's because a person has a lot of free time but doesn't yet have interesting or meaningful activities in their life, so they gradually spend more and more time on social media, and passive scrolling slowly becomes a new hobby. Just think about older people – they lived their whole lives without the internet and always had things to do, but in old age they have a lot of free time and gradually got hooked on TikTok, Shorts, and so on.

So this behavior emerges from the logic of how an organism operates in an environment of hyperstimulation. But it doesn't have to be this way. There's another way.

–

The Solution

I thought about this a lot because I faced it myself. I'd regularly zone out before bed and noticed after a while a kind of forgetfulness I hadn't had before – mornings where you wake up not remembering what happened yesterday and need time to piece it together.

Here's what I arrived at:

Following the same "use it or lose it" principle – you need to make sure you're regularly doing something that actually requires memory.

So instead of passive consumption – active creation.

Why creation? Because it's, roughly speaking, a type of activity where you're barely consuming any new information, but instead putting to use everything that's already accumulated over time. You're actively working with your memory, synthesizing all that noise and experience you've absorbed.

And my hypothesis is this: if you regularly replace passive consumption with active creation, you can not only get rid of the brain fog, the habit of not analyzing information, and the memory problems – but actually reach a different, above-average level of memory, self-awareness, and clarity.

I know "creation" sounds pretty abstract. Creation can be analog – woodcarving, origami, playing guitar, etc. – or digital: 3D modeling, design work, or writing like I'm doing right now. Cal Newport sets a good framework for this in his book Digital Minimalism, chapter 6 on leisure.

By the way, this post is a direct test of that hypothesis. Today instead of passively watching random YouTube videos, I'm writing, articulating, synthesizing knowledge and experience, putting it into a readable form.

–

Constructive criticism is welcome. Tell me what's unclear or where I'm wrong.

I have a suspicion that passive consumption leads to memory loss

The Problem

The problem with passive consumption is that the brain gets used to not storing information, because there's always too much of it, always in abundance. The result: a habit of not analyzing information + brain fog, and in the long run – memory problems.

I think memory problems arise through the "use it or lose it" principle. Meaning if you don't use something in your daily life, it just starts to atrophy – like muscles – and the same might be true for memory that you're not using actively enough if you spend most of your free time passively consuming information.

There are studies showing that people who regularly watched TV passively after work have a smaller hippocampus and less grey matter in the part of the brain associated with memory.

–

If you think about it, the problem of passive consumption is actually quite specific in its conditions, because for it to appear you need: a lot of free time + a lot of easily accessible information, and only once a habit forms (through repetition) do the consequences start showing up.

Why does it happen in the first place? I think it's because a person has a lot of free time but doesn't yet have interesting or meaningful activities in their life, so they gradually spend more and more time on social media, and passive scrolling slowly becomes a new hobby. Just think about older people – they lived their whole lives without the internet and always had things to do, but in old age they have a lot of free time and gradually got hooked on TikTok, Shorts, and so on.

So this behavior emerges from the logic of how an organism operates in an environment of hyperstimulation. But it doesn't have to be this way. There's another way.

–

The Solution

I thought about this a lot because I faced it myself. I'd regularly zone out before bed and noticed after a while a kind of forgetfulness I hadn't had before – mornings where you wake up not remembering what happened yesterday and need time to piece it together.

Here's what I arrived at:

Following the same "use it or lose it" principle – you need to make sure you're regularly doing something that actually requires memory.

So instead of passive consumption – active creation.

Why creation? Because it's, roughly speaking, a type of activity where you're barely consuming any new information, but instead putting to use everything that's already accumulated over time. You're actively working with your memory, synthesizing all that noise and experience you've absorbed.

And my hypothesis is this: if you regularly replace passive consumption with active creation, you can not only get rid of the brain fog, the habit of not analyzing information, and the memory problems – but actually reach a different, above-average level of memory, self-awareness, and clarity.

I know "creation" sounds pretty abstract. Creation can be analog – woodcarving, origami, playing guitar, etc. – or digital: 3D modeling, design work, or writing like I'm doing right now. Cal Newport sets a good framework for this in his book Digital Minimalism, chapter 6 on leisure.

By the way, this post is a direct test of that hypothesis. Today instead of passively watching random YouTube videos, I'm writing, articulating, synthesizing knowledge and experience, putting it into a readable form.

–

what do you think?

Constructive criticism is welcome. Tell me what's unclear or where I'm wrong.

Youtube must have been the worst addiction I’ve ever had.

Th YouTube became that nectar for me, that cocoon where people lived in the movie "The Matrix."

YouTube was my matrix – I'd go in and nothing else mattered. All problems disappeared in that moment, no pain. No need for friends anymore, why bother when there's MrBeast and endless entertainment? No need for smart people around you, when you can just watch pop-science videos? No need to act yourself, take risks, put in effort and time, when you can just watch others do it?

A habit formed. Whenever I felt bored, anxious, sad – I'd open YouTube, distract myself, and the problems would magically disappear.

Not only was I numbing my problems just to face them again later – which meant more pain and more escape – I also developed a habit of passive information consumption.

I'd open YouTube to escape the pain, and those damn algorithms would pick what I watched next. I'd mindlessly click on whatever thumbnail caught my eye and just... watch.

And that recommendation feed – that's the real evil. It just pushes you to consume without thinking. It plays on your animal instincts. You get shown the most clickbaity, the most provocative, the most outrageous thumbnails and titles – it's pure manipulation, and we do it to ourselves voluntarily.

And that kind of information bingeing doesn't pass without consequences. I constantly had brain fog – no clarity, a flood of thoughts, images, random sounds. Absolute chaos in my head. My head was literally buzzing.

And when you finally snap out of that haze, the problems are still there. I just forgot about them for a while, and reality hits twice as hard. You want to escape again.

Broken sleep, because you don't want to face reality. Falling asleep to some video, waking up feeling like garbage, not remembering anything from the day before. I developed digital dementia – living day to day, moment to moment, retaining nothing.

I was like that neighbor who comes home from the factory and turns on the TV first thing – just to forget everything. To avoid facing the horror of reality. More comfort, less pain. Except in a very, very amplified form. And that's not a figure of speech – that was my actual reality.

YouTube itself isn't bad – it's just a tool. A tool with a heavy bias toward superficiality and harm, designed to maximize consumption. Actively engaging with a lot of material is hard, so passive consumption – just watching – is extremely profitable for them and extremely damaging for you.

YouTube is a double-edged sword. You can use it for good or use it against yourself. But by default, YouTube is configured for passive consumption – with its recommendations, with a complete absence of any ethical approach to information.

And that's the problem. YouTube has genuinely useful content – lectures, tutorials, courses, interesting video essays – but at the same time it pushes you toward passively consuming random garbage, and most of the time that's exactly what you end up doing.

But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It doesn't. And here's what I did:

I started with willpower (telling myself I'd use it less) – didn't work.

Then I blocked YouTube completely so I wouldn't watch it – but I'd come back after a day or two.

Then I used browser extensions to hide all the addictive mechanics (remove recommendations, gray out thumbnails, hide comments, disable autoplay) – but eventually I'd just turn the extension off and go back to my old habits.

So I realized I couldn't rely on myself and I needed a system I couldn't change. An environment I'd have to adapt to, because I couldn't alter it.

And here's what I came up with:

Block YouTube completely. Make using it impossible, or at least very inconvenient.

Then, I vibe-coded a simple YouTube player – a site where I can paste a video link and watch it.

To find videos, I search directly in the browser.

That's it. That's the whole thing. After this, my usage dropped from 6 hours a day to 20–30 minutes.

YouTube stopped being a toy I play with when I'm bored, sad, or feeling low – and became a tool I use when I actually need it, to watch what I actually want, not what the algorithm feeds me.

And that barrier – having to decide what you want to watch and go find the link – kills all impulsive behavior. Because now watching something requires thinking, and thinking feels like effort, so the motivation to mindlessly consume just drops.

Friction kills addiction. Impulsive behavior only survives in an environment without obstacles. Look at how easy it is to get lost in YouTube, how low the barrier to entry is – same with TikTok, same with Instagram. It's designed that way on purpose. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it.

This was my solution for YouTube – one I've been living with for over a year now, and it works beautifully for me.

Ask questions if anything isn't clear, and share your own solutions.

Youtube must have been the worst addiction I’ve ever had.

Th YouTube became that nectar for me, that cocoon where people lived in the movie "The Matrix."

YouTube was my matrix – I'd go in and nothing else mattered. All problems disappeared in that moment, no pain. No need for friends anymore, why bother when there's MrBeast and endless entertainment? No need for smart people around you, when you can just watch pop-science videos? No need to act yourself, take risks, put in effort and time, when you can just watch others do it?

A habit formed. Whenever I felt bored, anxious, sad – I'd open YouTube, distract myself, and the problems would magically disappear.

Not only was I numbing my problems just to face them again later – which meant more pain and more escape – I also developed a habit of passive information consumption.

I'd open YouTube to escape the pain, and those damn algorithms would pick what I watched next. I'd mindlessly click on whatever thumbnail caught my eye and just... watch.

And that recommendation feed – that's the real evil. It just pushes you to consume without thinking. It plays on your animal instincts. You get shown the most clickbaity, the most provocative, the most outrageous thumbnails and titles – it's pure manipulation, and we do it to ourselves voluntarily.

And that kind of information bingeing doesn't pass without consequences. I constantly had brain fog – no clarity, a flood of thoughts, images, random sounds. Absolute chaos in my head. My head was literally buzzing.

And when you finally snap out of that haze, the problems are still there. I just forgot about them for a while, and reality hits twice as hard. You want to escape again.

Broken sleep, because you don't want to face reality. Falling asleep to some video, waking up feeling like garbage, not remembering anything from the day before. I developed digital dementia – living day to day, moment to moment, retaining nothing.

I was like that neighbor who comes home from the factory and turns on the TV first thing – just to forget everything. To avoid facing the horror of reality. More comfort, less pain. Except in a very, very amplified form. And that's not a figure of speech – that was my actual reality.

YouTube itself isn't bad – it's just a tool. A tool with a heavy bias toward superficiality and harm, designed to maximize consumption. Actively engaging with a lot of material is hard, so passive consumption – just watching – is extremely profitable for them and extremely damaging for you.

YouTube is a double-edged sword. You can use it for good or use it against yourself. But by default, YouTube is configured for passive consumption – with its recommendations, with a complete absence of any ethical approach to information.

And that's the problem. YouTube has genuinely useful content – lectures, tutorials, courses, interesting video essays – but at the same time it pushes you toward passively consuming random garbage, and most of the time that's exactly what you end up doing.

But that doesn't mean it has to be that way. It doesn't. And here's what I did:

I started with willpower (telling myself I'd use it less) – didn't work.

Then I blocked YouTube completely so I wouldn't watch it – but I'd come back after a day or two.

Then I used browser extensions to hide all the addictive mechanics (remove recommendations, gray out thumbnails, hide comments, disable autoplay) – but eventually I'd just turn the extension off and go back to my old habits.

So I realized I couldn't rely on myself and I needed a system I couldn't change. An environment I'd have to adapt to, because I couldn't alter it.

And here's what I came up with:

Block YouTube completely. Make using it impossible, or at least very inconvenient.

Then, I vibe-coded a simple YouTube player – a site where I can paste a video link and watch it.

To find videos, I search directly in the browser.

That's it. That's the whole thing. After this, my usage dropped from 6 hours a day to 20–30 minutes.

YouTube stopped being a toy I play with when I'm bored, sad, or feeling low – and became a tool I use when I actually need it, to watch what I actually want, not what the algorithm feeds me.

And that barrier – having to decide what you want to watch and go find the link – kills all impulsive behavior. Because now watching something requires thinking, and thinking feels like effort, so the motivation to mindlessly consume just drops.

Friction kills addiction. Impulsive behavior only survives in an environment without obstacles. Look at how easy it is to get lost in YouTube, how low the barrier to entry is – same with TikTok, same with Instagram. It's designed that way on purpose. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it.

This was my solution for YouTube – one I've been living with for over a year now, and it works beautifully for me.

Ask questions if anything isn't clear, and share your own solutions.