Find a hobby. Youtube might be a good place to look.

How about ignoring the home feed that’s designed to keep you hooked?

Limit yourself to the view with videos from channels you actually subscribe to. And curate your subscriptions to higher quality.

The end result is a list of videos that will run out every day, forcing you to get up and do something else instead of finding another related video to watch.

I did this during the pandemic and after a few days of friction it felt much healthier to me. YouTube became a secondary part of my hobby/media habits instead of an all-consuming one.

I've found podcasts to be a good stepping stone. Lots of YouTubers have podcasts, too, so you don't have to find entirely new creators. And it's still a form of entertainment, but without tying your eyes to a screen.

So, you can do other stuff while listening to podcasts, like going on a walk / bike ride, cleaning your place, chopping veggies before cooking, doing the dishes, gardening, drawing etc..

On F-Droid, you can get AntennaPod for listening to podcasts.

There is a plugin called unhook that I find useful for this purpose. You can hide suggested, chat, comments, home feed, etc to really hone in on what you want to watch. Each option has a toggle so for days that you feel the need to just loaf you can still do so. I also uninstalled YouTube from my mobile devices so I am forced to use the browser which adds additional friction. I still watch a lot of YouTube, but I am much more intentional now.

Are you watching or do you passive listed like me? Or are you on the reels because that's magnitudes of more difficult to pull yourself back from.

Generally the best advice for most phone addictions is to have allotted times for phone use. If you're on one of the former mentioned types of videos I personally would shift to one of the less absorbing kinds until you're at a point where you can do a different activity.

Can you go for walks where you're at? Garden? Crochet? What did you like doing before you liked youtube?

Do you like it that much. I mean overall I find it has some nice things to be a time filler but I don't see addictive levels of good content. Are you following the algo like with facebook and other social media. if so its not a facebook thing its a social media algo addiction.