Books killed the YouTube star.

The more I watch YouTube, the more surface-level I see it for.

I am someone who watches YouTube a lot. I don’t have a subscription service—no Amazon Prime, no Netflix, no Apple TV+. I watch YouTube. My problem is that I’ve started reading again... let me explain.

This year, my goal is to read every single day. Since the start of the year, I’ve already read more than I did last year, and we are not even halfway through. Why is this a problem?

Books are filled with information, research, and references. Books take years and years to write, edit, and publish, let alone promote and get people to read them. Whereas YouTube, anyone can turn on a camera, press record, and tell you something or show you something.

Since YouTube is a social media/entertainment platform, creators pump out video after video. While a book takes years, a YouTube creator will make around 24 videos a year. Because of this—and also the dilemma of viewer retention—videos need to be quick to give you information while also being entertaining, be it through editing techniques or what have you.

Because of this, videos can only touch the surface of a topic. If they dive deeper, they have to sacrifice one or two things: viewership (fewer people are willing to watch a video over an hour long) and/or quality (low budget, just someone narrating). Because of this, very few videos are made that dive deep into the specific topic you want to learn about.

Since the invention of the printing press and the wonderful digital age of e-books, there are endless books on subjects you might be interested in. Furthermore, most books that are non-fiction are written by professionals in their field or on the topic they are writing about.

Do you see my problem? I can spend hours trying to research and find a video or blog post on a subject, or I can search for a book on that subject. More often than not, I find the book before the video essay.

Now that I read more than I watch YouTube, whenever I go back to YouTube for entertainment, I find it weak, surface-level, not very deep, or topics just pointing out or summarising common sense or basic knowledge on that subject.

The more you learn, the more you read, the more you realise what you don’t know. The flip side of that is, when you are educated on a subject, you find repetition or commonalities in what people talk about on that subject.

And be careful what you read, because if you read or take in the same information as everyone else, you will end up just thinking the same as everyone else—same ideas, thoughts, and beliefs. It’s only by looking at the obscure, the forgotten, or not-so-well-known books that we find new ideas. And YouTube is just filled with the same thing. They even have channels dedicated to replicating the same look, or “how-to” videos that are just photocopies of themselves.

Also, the downside to reading is that you get educated and learn so much that you see common links and repeating beliefs, studies, or research. If I read another book that points out the marshmallow study, I skip that chapter or put the book down because I know I will not learn very much from that book or YouTube video.

Books have killed the YouTube creator for me.

And looking back, trying to watch YouTube, I’m kind of glad books killed the YouTube creator for me, because now I’m reading books I never would have thought to pick up—books that I have learned so much from that a 15-minute YouTube video could never teach me.

The more I watch YouTube, the more surface-level I see it for. YouTube is great; it’s just not currently for me, and that’s OK.

Books killed the YouTube star.