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I'm in my late 40s and have Instagram on desktop. I watch reels from time to time. The clips I watch are definitely >6 seconds (more like 30s to 1.5 minutes --
by wenc 1y ago
I'm in my late 40s and have Instagram on desktop. I watch reels from time to time. The clips I watch are definitely >6 seconds (more like 30s to 1.5 minutes -- there are very few clips under 10 seconds on my feed). And agree with emily, Instagram on desktop isn't as addictive. I scroll for 10-15 minutes and I'm done.
Also, Instagram's Reels algorithm isn't that smart. I watch maybe 20% of reels to completion (I skip 80% of reels after 2 seconds). The Reels algorithm shows me a bunch of stuff that it thinks would interest me, but really don't. I don't understand why, because I do follow a lot of content creators. I'm also quite reptilian -- if I see a weird animal or a dam bursting or a powerwashing scene, I will watch it. But Instagram doesn't seem to pick up on that.
Now I've heard TikTok's algorithm is much smarter and thus more addictive than Instagram's. I promised myself that I will never be on TikTok.
YouTube subscriptions are my main form of entertainment. I justify it because I learn so much useful stuff from them.
YouTube Shorts? I don't bother at all -- despite my having curated my subscriptions carefully, the recommended shorts are so boring that I never click on them.
- encrypted_bird 1y agoI also use YouTube, but I don't use the internal YouTube subscription function; I just subscribe to each channel's RSS feed and use an RSS notifier browser extension. I also try to limit how many channels I track to only around a dozen tops (if that), most of which are music artist channels to let me know when they have a new song out. The few that aren't music channels I just download with yt-dlp and temporarily put them on my NAS to watch with my Emby server. This way, I can watch them from the comfort of my couch and I don't have to deal with ads. :)