I feel like it’s the main reason I can’t stop my YouTube addiction, do you guys have any ideas ?
Perspective shift.
Imagine zooming out of your body, into the sky, looking down at all the people and land and everything.
You can’t keep up with all that, right? But is most of it really worth much? Is a squirrel eating a nut over yonder really all that important?
Your attention is always limited in scope, but it’s existing in a nearly unlimited world. So you have to manually constrain it with your own conscious decision-making. Goals are helpful in this.
Can also help to relieve the FOMO on actually genuinely important things to you by setting up a nice system that feeds you the news you want. There’s lots of services.
One thing that honestly helped me with this was watching this video about the size of everything in our observable universe.
It’s this type of thinking that helped me reduce my indecision. When I’m faced with a huge menu, I try to go with my first instinct instead of waffling, reminding myself that there’s no way to experience everything, but I’ll have more time to experience more if I spend less time paralyzed by choice.
I’m sorry but could you describe your YouTube addiction? I just don’t understand how someone can be addicted to YouTube or how FOMO happens in that scenario.
Missing out new videos, new memes, trends (in yt shorts) I guess I also have a parasocial relationship with one YouTuber (I started to stop looking at his videos because it was obsessive and we doesn’t share any politics opinions anymore) so yeah…
Ah, alright. It’s good to work towards ridding yourself of an addiction, but it needs to be replaced by a healthier alternative. It sounds to me like you would benefit from nore social stimulation. Maybe join a hobby club or group of some sort, then you can involve yourself more in that where you get a different kind of satisfaction from learning / doing something new.
I know that sounds cheesy but there are tons of things going on besides digitally; check out what’s happening locally, there are probably other people who want to change up their habits with something different too and summer is a great time to do it. At the very least you could start cutting back the amount of time you spend on YouTube and work some other things into your daily routine.
My experience with “bad” emotions: you can’t really control them, all you can do is control how you react to them. Becoming comfortable with negative feelings is a valuable life skill that will always serve you well. So, accepting negative feelings (FOMO) and not fleeing from them (back into YouTube) is an important first step here.
Then, change the narrative. If you feel FOMO, channel it to:
- Reading a book
- Playing a game
- Watching TV
- Doing some kind of fun hobby
Gradually you will feel less FOMO and more interest in the activities you use to replace it. But it will suck and you will backslide. It’s okay, it’s a process.
Part of changing the narrative is also to engage in less structured activities that induce FOMO in you. Are your friends (or a specific friend) creating FOMO for you when you interact out with them? Do the feelings happen more when you engage with a specific social media platforms? Is there a time of day or a particular place that creates it more than others?
Changing your habits to avoid those triggers will gradually reduce your feelings as well.
I can’t say it will work for everyone, but I saw therapy to help me control my anxiety related to my OCD. It really helped me accept things outside of my control and to just move on when there are things that trigger me.
Everything is an opportunity cost. That is, if you’re engaging in YouTube you are missing out on something else. It’s fine if that’s the choice you want to make, but understand that you’re “missing out” on hanging out with friends or reading or video games or calling a family member.
