Christie Bogle

ENGL 1010

The Conflict With My Addiction Of Youtube

By:
Kaimen Searle

December 1, 2020
 It was when I was about 8 years old when I first started using youtube, so about

10 years ago. I remember that I thought it was super cool and I loved watching

Minecraft Lets Plays. I got so into youtube that I wanted to make my own youtube

channel, and create my own Minecraft videos at this age. I got all the editing and

recording software and then I finally started. I was so excited that my cousin and I

played on a world and I recorded, I think, 20 - 30 episodes in total in a couple of weeks.

I then started posting them on youtube, I posted 4 videos and I was so excited and

thought that I was so cool at the time. Then I lost interest and stopped. Funny enough, I

still have the extra 20 or so videos that I didn’t post still downloaded on my computer.

This was the first experience of youtube for me and I loved it. I had so much

passion that I would watch hours and hours every day, but this amount of consumption

of videos from this platform came at a cost that still affects me today.

Currently, I am age 17 and am a senior at high school. I am taking 14 credit hours

at Salt lake community college. On top of that, I am working about 30 hours a week

between 2 jobs and in the middle of getting my real estate license. With all this on my

hands, I have very little free time and spend countless hours doing homework in my

room. But, there is always one major problem because I have an app that I have a love-

hate relationship with, in my pocket 24/7. Youtube. I have to battle my subconscious

addiction that is constantly trying to pull me away from doing something useful to

watch, just one video, maybe just take a 15-minute break. When I give in, I always tell

myself that I won’t pass just one video in 15 minutes, but then I say to myself “just one

more”. That never goes to plan. I then look at the time and realize that four hours have

passed and I still have 5 more assignments to do and only one hour to do them.
 This addiction has not only lost me valuable time but has caused many other

problems as well. The biggest of these problems is the addiction to playing video games

and staying up way too late into the night. With video games, I try and dedicate a good

chunk of time to play them, which usually lasts about 1 - 2 hours. This is usually because

I need a break from homework. But on certain games and new games I can easily play

way past that and when I have the free time, can reach the 8-10 hour mark throughout

the day. When staying up watching youtube I can easily and consistently reach the 12

pm to 2 am mark and this in turn only leaves me with 4 - 6 hours to sleep. These

extremely annoying habits have gotten much better over this last year and I have

learned how to better manage my time and learned how and when I can allow myself to

play games and watch videos. But the addiction can still occasionally creep up.

All in all, I have used youtube for a very long time and I have very good memories

tied to this app. But, I have learned that I need to be careful where I spend my time

because it could cause much bigger consequences later down the road.