social media and intentionality

Recently I’ve become reaware of my lack of intentionality when I use social media. I say reaware because I had realised this same thing when a took a break from instagram a few years ago.

What prompted it this time was Invidious. After setting up my own instance and importing my existing YouTube subscriptions, I realised that it obviously has no recommendations to show me. It only has trending videos (which are largely videos I don’t care about) and videos by the creators I am subscribed to.

Incidentally I found some of the same ideas expressed in two other places that exact same day. At another private frontend for YouTube and a video by Vihart.

This made me recognize two things about how I use YouTube:

• I almost never use my subscription feed and instead rely on the home page and "the algorithm" to show me videos.
• I go to YouTube for no specific reason. Not to learn something nor to be entertained. Instead to stare and consume whatever the almighty "algorithm" has to offer me.

Using Invidious instead of YouTube forces me to ask "Why did I come here?" which results in one of two outcomes:

• Instead of spending (wasting) hours on YouTube I leave and do something else.
• Watch the video I wanted to watch and then leave and do something else.

Either way I avoid the infinite homepage -> video -> homepage loop, because odds are Invidious has nothing new to show me. So it seems that aside from the privacy benefits of Invidious it has practical benefits too.

Now how do I do the same for Reddit, Twitch and Hacker News?
Should I even care about any of this? Is spending a lot of time on YouTube a problem?
Even if I didn't, would I do anything more "productive" anyway (a topic for another day)?