Gadgetory

so there's a new version of the YouTube app on Android and it has some interesting features in it now most people they're talking about the new dark mode which is cool I'm a big fan of dark modes in general but the thing that was more interesting to me than that was the watch time tracking the YouTube is now making available to you it's giving you that information back of course YouTube's always knew how much time you spent on YouTube but they didn't tell you certainly not within the app and not on the webpage either in fact they still don't on the webpage not within the settings or anywhere like that but on Android right now you can find out how much time you're spending on YouTube a daily average a weekly average maybe you can bring some balance to your life now a little personal story here before I dive into the feature and we take a look at my watch history and how much time I've spent on YouTube recently I have been trying to tone it down a little bit take a little break from YouTube's consumption because it can overcome overwhelm of course that is the case with all forms of entertainment social media and so on it can absorb you and you can actually kind of miss out on real life because you're too invested with the screen it's locked in there's no life left over so nobody wants that it appears even YouTube doesn't want that because they're making this data available to you as well as some features to help you also take a break from YouTube it seems crazy they want you to watch more content watch more ads they can earn more money but for whatever reason they must have recognized that people were taking it a bit too far or maybe they were getting burned out strung out on the YouTube binge toggle it back you got to have a balance here and so we're gonna make this available to you so anyhow I made that video a little while back about it was called no phone as an app where you could limit your usage of certain apps limit the addiction to a certain extent for most of you that isn't realistic but maybe they on an app specific basis you know maybe you could take a break here in there and regain some of your actual life back from the social media vortex so anyhow I'm gonna dive into my YouTube here and this will be available to you on the latest version of YouTube for Android so go download it if you don't have it yet head up to your profile image up here and then click on time watched so here you can see today I watched 2 hours and 25 minutes that's more than usual yesterday was 51 minutes in the past week 7 hours and 28 for a daily average of an hour and four minutes now you might be looking at density that's a lot of time to me it does seem like a lot of time when you see it like that I might want to knock it back even a little bit more now again this seems odd I'm telling myself maybe you to watch less YouTube why would anyone want to do that I mean this is where I am this is where I speak to you here on YouTube but you know it's about quality over quantity watching the things that you want that are useful to you and maybe not getting so caught up in the algorithmic stuff of just the whole click farm just next next I don't even know what I'm clicking on anymore why am i attracted to this thumbnail you can have a little bit more agency over those clicks if you're a little bit more careful about how you spend these hours we're gonna bring in Willie do right now because he's got some staggering figures here the men he spends a little bit of time on YouTube as I understand it so here he is round of applause for the YouTube champion of the office this man banks the biggest numbers on YouTube it's all here it's all happening now let's put the smartphone on the table see what we're working with here all right time watched here we are okay put it aside mine your your watching a little more than me 2 hours and 38 minutes a day that equals out to 18 hours and 30 minutes a week yeah that's quite a lot I'm actually a little ashamed but but make the case I would have to say that most of the videos are educational mmm like that watch a lot of lectures yes but also I stream a lot of music a lot of just live music right an occasional ASMR here right that's pretty much it look there's all kinds of habits here that are gonna adjust how these numbers look for you like he said if you're streaming music well you're not really watching it's on in the background maybe you are being productive maybe you are doing something else maybe you are watching something educational there is no black and white strict rule with this stuff it's not like just watching in general is bad it's a you just got to get something from it yeah something valuable something that like an unbox therapy video but I guarantee you someone in the audience is gonna go check their stats right now and they're gonna crush your 18 hours I guarantee it and I'm curious to see the numbers that people come up with and also just the numbers that people think are acceptable as YouTube the web our smart phones have displaced the television and now all of our hours for the most part are being spent here you have to expect that these are going to continue to go up as the quality of content goes up as well that's true we both have the new dark mode enabled to so recommend that you can see there's a feature here which can remind you to take a break I'm going to turn this on for me I'm gonna turn on for what we'll obviously needs it now the default setting for that is one hour and 15 minutes so I wonder if Google thinks that one hour fifteen minutes is kind of like the perfect viewing session with Google there's always some reasoning so I'm assuming that's the case we're both gonna get reminders from now on every one hour and 15 minutes you have autoplay next video you have this off yeah I I don't usually okay I'm gonna turn that off to scheduled digest let's say you get notifications from five or six channels uh-huh you will get one notification as a daily digest of those uploads interesting I think the point with some of those features there are to eliminate distractions if you're get if you're distracted too frequently and then of course if the reminder to take a break is just like look you spend an hour and 15 maybe you want to go do something else listen this is important this is important right here because the truth is even if YouTube could show you a million different ads if you're not engaged if you're not interested if you're a vegetable a zombie sitting there drooling foaming-at-the-mouth you're not helpful really to anyone what content creators advertisers anybody that's serving up anything to somebody on the other side of this lens watching through their smartphone wants to deliver something that's engaging yeah beyond entertainment there's some sort of utility that should go with it hopefully I think that's kind of the best YouTube that's my favorite type of YouTube if I can take something away with me that I consider to be useful then I tend to not feel as guilty for having spent my time doing that yeah like I said before leave a comment down below how much time are you spending watching YouTube and what's the biggest time waster in which content do you feel most guilty about watching what are those hours you want to get back I'm curious I want to know maybe the algorithm is not always right