YouTube and its other social media counterparts like TikTok and Instagram are literally designed to hook you. These companies have spent millions of dollars on R&D to find the best way to keep you engaged and on their apps for as long as possible.

For example, just recently, I was intending to search a tutorial on YouTube, trying to figure out a technical set up. But the moment I popped on YouTube, I was immediately faced with a wall of glaring thumbnails and titles; something that led me to even forget why I was there in the first place!

The next time you open YouTube, take a moment to observe and notice what’s going on: all these thumbnails are carefully and meticulously placed to grab your attention.

But to stay focused and avoid this trap, you need to be extremely laser-focused and hyper-intentional: something which all of us can’t always be every single time; most especially if by our own willpower.

A Possible Solution: Searching With Intentionality Through Search Engines

A potential, practical solution I thought of in the moment would be to avoid searching on YouTube entirely.

Instead, use a search engine like Google or Microsoft Bing (well yeah, Bing!). These platforms often show you relevant YouTube videos at the top of the search results —without all those click-baity thumbnails and autoplay suggestions from YouTube’s homepage

YouTube’s Home Page (if signed in with a Google Account)

Bing even has its own YouTube player!

This way, you can focus on what you’re looking for, rather than being bombarded by endless unrelated recommendations. (Of course, there are still recommended videos down below, however they are a bit more minimal…but the main point here is that you remind yourself that you are searching with intentionality)

Bing’s YouTube Player

Of course, to any solution, there’s a caveat: you may not see the full range of content that Youtube would show you when searching a web page, so this may inherently limit some videos that you are related.

But if your main goal is to simply stay focused and avoid distractions, I do think that this trade-off is worth it.

You’re not just handing over your attention to an algorithm that wants you locked on the screen — you’re taking that control back and searching with intentionality.

(To ponder on) Of course though, this is a temporary solution. But, imagine, what if we had a solution that could actually provide the same accuracy of content that YouTube has, but to an extremely focused extent? Perhaps a minimalist YouTube wrapper — that instead of showing you a cluttered results page, it shows you a single, relevant video…