Using YouTube as a Tool for Education

YouTube is a great video sharing platform housing all forms of content from entertainment to education. My personal issue with YouTube is not its desire to increase the money made through advertisements, but rather the way that this is done: increasing viewer watch-time. On many occasions, I have found myself tempted by many well recommended videos, turning the task of watching a video into the hour of watching many.

Being the most trusted and most popular website for watching videos, it feels only natural to accept YouTube as the home of educational content. This can become problematic when this desire to watch more content, and YouTube’s desire to increase watch-time, interfere with your working life.

My solution: dual accounts.

To overcome the issues of YouTube, I recommend making an additional account that focusses purely on your education. When using the original account for entertainment, be sure to use it as you wish, clicking on recommended videos and interacting with videos. When using the new account based for education, YouTube will have nothing to base your interests off so the first few actions will hold some significance. I recommend subscribing to some studios channels such as “Kahn Academy” or a channel that specializes in your subject fields. When a recommended video pops up that is not relevant, simply click the three dots in the bottom right corner and pick the “Not interested.” prompt, as depicted below.

This should help to optimize the algorithm that suggests videos for you and hopefully prevent other distracting recommended videos in the future.

I hope that this tip helps you to stay more productive while using YouTube as a resource for education.

Footnotes:
(Pictures) Hardware Unboxed’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCI8iQa1hv7oV_Z8D35vVuSg