I don’t have YouTube downloaded on my phone.
Any app I use regularly (with the exception of social media in an effort to deter use) is downloaded. Any app I even use semi-regularly is downloaded. So what is the logical conclusion here? That I don’t watch YouTube videos regularly.
And that conclusion is correct, much to the confusion of many of my friends.
If you remove the percentage of my friends who use YouTube simply for entertainment, I am still left with a high number using it as a means of education. Learning new recipes, makeup tutorials, music lessons, academic lectures – you name it, they’re pulling it up.
We could look at podcasts in the same way. My friends (along with the rest of the planet) are avid podcast listeners. It’s very normal to hear a thought from them begin with, “I was listening to a podcast and…”
For a long time, I felt oddly guilty about the low number of YouTube videos I watched and podcasts I listened through. On the surface, that would seem like a weird thing to feel guilt over. But when a learning method is popular, when a lot of the people you’re surrounded by are into it, it’s easy to fall into the trap of, “I must do this thing or be looked down upon.”
Or maybe it’s not that extreme. Maybe it’s more like the interactions I’ve had where you’re asked all sorts of questions on your thoughts about a YouTuber or podcaster…but you’ve never heard of any of them.
It’s taken me a while to be okay with the fact that while I watch YouTube videos and listen to podcasts from time to time, that’s not how I learn. I had to figure out what works for me.
And I have! I don’t naturally turn to podcasts or YouTube videos to teach me something. Instead, I pull up instructions and do it. I talk about the things I’m trying to think about, learn about, or develop my opinion on with other people. And my favorite: I write about it, and use the research process behind the piece I’m writing to fill in the gaps.
If you don’t learn best through audio or visual, don’t hop on the video or podcast trends just because they’re popular. Put that time into learning the way that works FOR you. You may not have answers to all the questions lobbed at you during parties, but you’ll certainly be in a better place educationally for it.
KELVEY OLIVIA VANDER HART 