Over the years, I have gradually cut social media out of my life without much hesitation.

What remained was YouTube.

Quietly, it had become my preferred platform.

At least that was what I thought.

Recently, however, I realized something.

What I enjoy about YouTube has very little to do with social media.

It has much more to do with learning and exploring my interests.

That realization led me to make a change.

I deleted my watch history.

Then I deleted my search history.

And I disabled YouTube from saving both going forward.

Why?

Because I want to decide for myself what I watch.

I want to search for things because I am curious about them.

Not because an algorithm thinks I might be interested.

The more YouTube learns about us, the more it tries to predict what we want next.

Sometimes it does a surprisingly good job.

Too good, perhaps.

I noticed old videos reappearing in my feed.

Recommendations based on things I had watched months or even years ago.

The platform kept trying to continue a conversation I had already moved on from.

So I reset it.

Now YouTube only shows me content from the channels I have chosen to subscribe to.

If I want something else, I have to actively search for it.

That small change feels surprisingly liberating.

I have two YouTube accounts.

One is dedicated entirely to drones and my channel, Karl’s Drone Adventures.

The other is Karl in Rural Japan.

There I follow different interests entirely.

News sources I trust.

Educational creators.

Filmmakers.

People who inspire or entertain me.

Keeping those interests separated has helped me keep both accounts focused and tidy.

More importantly, it has helped me avoid information overload.

Looking back, I think that is what this change is really about.

Not YouTube.

Not social media.

Not algorithms.

It is about being intentional with my attention.

There is already more information available than I could ever consume in a lifetime.

I don’t need more suggestions.

I need more clarity about what I actually want to learn, watch, and explore.

And sometimes that starts by turning off the recommendations and deciding for myself.