9 Things That Will Reveal Just How Addicted You Are To YouTube

because lets be honest, who isn't on the Tubes?

1. Notification Squad

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Most people nowadays own a smartphone that they carry around by their side no matter what time of day or where they are. Youtube having over a billion users as well as the ability to mobility reach more people than any cable network in the United States, it is to no surprise that people are also getting notified by YouTube when their favorite content creators uploads a new video. The attachment we have to our cellular devices means that we can get new video notifications right away; and by procceeding to watch the newly posted video after receiving that notification, it truely says something about your addiction with YouTube.

Yup. Homework, studying, and anything else important can wait as always!

2. Following all the social media accounts

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YouTubers usually do not just stay inside the YouTube realm when it comes to connecting with their audience. Content creators who actively post videos on YouTube also create social networking accounts to further deepen that producer and audience relationship. By following all the social media accounts of your favorite YouTuber, you are keeping up with what they are up to on the daily, interacting with them and possibly even have the chance to be noticed! The desire to create a closer bond over just being the consumer shows how important the YouTube community has become for you!

Because, why not be up to date through Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook... they are our best friends!!!

3. You know where the OG YouTuber's are at

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The faces from the old YouTube community are no strangers to us, they are actually the one's who brought most of us here today! The growth of content creators has spiked since the old YouTube days and that is all thanks to the creativity of our fellow OG YouTubers. They have influenced even the audience themselves to become the video producers which was not possible in the past. From watching them talk to the camera in their bedroom to walking down red carpet events, you can not help but to feel proud of the accomplishments YouTubers has done over such a short period of time! If you were there from the beginning, you definitely watched a bit too much YouTube since 2009.

On the serious note, if you don't know who that guy is above, you must live under a rock.

4. The ability to identify YouTube lingo

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You have officially joined a YouTuber's squad when you have the inside scoops and can identify the small gestures and phrases that they are constantly using in their videos. Wonder why you get so attached to some of your favorite YouTubers? It is because those small actions make you feel a lot more engaged and connected with the person behind the screen! It becomes even more evident that your an advit YouTube user when you unconciously use those phrases and gestures in your daily life.

*cough* to much *cough* YouTube!!!

5. Checking YouTube multiple times a day

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YouTube is there when you wake up, eat lunch, and right before passing out at the end of the day. It becomes a habit. Neuroscientists have traced our habit- making behaviours back to a part of our brain called the basal ganglia, which plays a large role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition (Duhigg, 2012). By constantly being attached to our social media accounts like YouTube to check for the newest posts, overtime, this behaviour becomes automatic and it becomes a part of our routine unconciously because we do it so often. By the time you realize this is happening, YouTube would have already become a large part of your daily life... YIKES!

6. Why binge watch Netflix, when you got YouTube

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When you spend at LEAST spend an hour or two a day (the more the better), watching YouTube videos back to back. Nowadays, people would rather watch short videos, look at memes, and read short articles to kill time. This is because the human attention span today is not very long. In 2015, a research showed that the average human attention span was only 8.25 second long (Harden, 2016). The short video span of YouTube videos like on Buzzfeed allows people to watch engaging and entertaining content in such a manner that it does not seem like they were sitting watching the same thing for hours. By clicking through related videos and being subscribed to multiple channels, it is easy to be sucked into a vortex that you cannot get out of for hours at times.

7. Watching the same video over and over again

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It's not that we have nothing else to do, there is always a list of things to get done. It just that when you are on YouTube, you can't just leave. The urges to watch videos are REAL and if there isn't anything good to watch, we are going to watch our favorite videos again and again and again .... (to be continued) ....

8. The real struggle: deciding which video to watch first

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Decisions, decisions. It is a real delimma trying to figure out which videos to watch first because of all the options availabe on YouTube. It's like deciding whether you should eat the cake first, or the icecream. YouTube has thousands of content creators posting daily, and without noticing, it is possible for users to be subscribed to hundreds of channels. Having such a high subscription numbers, there are even more video choices to choose from. It is even harder to decide when all your favorite YouTubers post on the exact same day...

9. Last but definitely not least ... When you're more than a few days behind on YouTube and anxiety hits

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When life gets in the way and you don't have the chance to catch up on YouTube ... all you can think about is how many videos you have missed and how you are going to make it up. YouTube states that an average viewing session in more than 40 minutes and that is only on mobile. However, if that is only mobile and it still takes 40 minutes, imagine having 392 subscriptions and missing YouTube for 3 days, thats going to take at least 3 hours to catch up on all the videos you missed. If you are able to relate to this and feel some sort of anxiety, you are truly addicted to YouTube!

Citations

* Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. New York: Random House.

* Harden, S. (2016). Attention Span Statistics - Statistic Brain. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/

* YouTube (n.d.) Press: Statistics. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html