Video Essays Make You Dumber
This isn't just my opinion.
In his masterpiece Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman cited what were groundbreaking studies at the time on programs that were putting documentaries and films in American classrooms that showed that participants retained less information than from written text.
And this makes logical sense. You can read written text more than once. You can highlight it, copy it down, and interweave it with previous knowledge.
It is also immediately applicable. I can combine it with other information I have to formulate new ideas. My brain is working, in other words.
I remember when John and Hank Green created Crash Courses, probably the first video essay channel on Youtube.
They worked with actual university professors and utilized their own knowledge to create quality videos.
But that misses Postman's point. He is arguing that it is the medium that is the problem, not the information in it.
Watching moving images literally stops our brain from processing information.
This doesn't matter so much in long form media like movies where the same theme is carried throughout the film, and merely explored in various scenes. Your brain can keep up and say, "okay, I see how this connects to the central point."
When you are trying to learn new material, though you are processing way more information than there is in a typical movie.
Hope this persuades you to stop watching videos and start reading books.