You should read books and blog articles instead of YouTube videos
2 min readApr 29, 2020
YouTubers are often information marketeers, gurus, trying to sell you their views, their products, their ego and their channel.
Whereas books and blog articles are more focused on understanding the content, than on the individual and their ideology.
Disadvantages of YouTube infotainment:
- Low in content-depth and very high in entertainment
- Too much fun, so the rest of life will be boring
- Addictive
- Ideological
- Information bubble — You never learn to understand why other people have different opinions. You just assume they are wrong.
- Uses up more dopamine, so you will be less motivated to do things that require focus and discipline
- Kills your ability to do long-term tasks that require focus
- Videos often repeat of what you already know and believe
- You will be manipulated unconsciously against your personal interest, because the information isn’t the only product. You are the product, the YouTube channel is the product. So much is being brainwashed into you.
- The goal of the videos is to make you want to consume more and more… as a mindless drone. The brightest minds in the world are working for Google trying to make you more addicted.
- YouTube is feed-based like other social media. The algorithm decides what you watch and you don’t consciously choose what you read. It’s programmed to make you addicted, click refresh and watch more like a drone.
Advantages of books:
- Higher in content depth
- Has 500 pages of deep content about a subject instead of 5/10 minutes
- Teaches you to focus, so contributes to being more present in daily life.
- The information and the book are the product
Please feel free to contribute! :) I just wrote this down for myself. I’m happy that I’m less addicted to YouTube and finally able to concentrate on reading blog articles and audiobooks again.