I think im just less prone to doomscroll type addictions, but i found myself sitting on the toilet for longer than normal when youtube shorts became something tougher to easily remove from the base youtube experience on their app.

This caused me to disable the youtube app(literally can't uninstall it on a pixel stock os), and if i ever utilize youtube on my phone its through firefox instead.

I also got the extension unhook on my desktop/laptop, and now my youtube experience is more reminiscent of the early 2010s where I would just use it to look up sports highlights or music videos, and if i don't have a video or subject in mind im not force fed one.

This also just kinda shows me how terrible the search experience is on youtube. Feel like all of their effort is on their doomscroll / suggested content, rather than their search results.

personally I haven't used tiktok ever but Instagram reels are the real thing

however, I must say that youtube shorts is the worst of the bunch, even if I'm trying to be entertained, it's full of just slop spam and "top 5" or something that I'm not interested in, while reels are actually funny

I remember I'd sometimes try and get into it, scrolling just to see if I can find one thing that's actually good and just quitting because I got frustrated.

it's truly the worst of the bunch in my opinion.

and they've definitely made the overall experience worse on youtube while focusing all efforts on shorts and funneling you to it.