It’s rare to find a person who cannot relate to falling victim to the infamous “YouTube Rabbit Hole.” This tends to have a negative connotation associated with it. Because people find themselves wasting countless hours watching mindless content from fail videos to sports clips to funny animal shots.
I am guilty as charged. However, it is not always such a terrible thing. Yes, I have fallen into the more classic YouTube rabbit hole, watching funny videos that entertain me. But more often than not, I actually find myself venturing down a rabbit hole of self-improvement.
Of course, YouTube is full of mindless videos that create a distraction from our day-to-day routines. However, there are also countless videos focused on educational topics that provide many benefits. Some of my favorite happen to be science experiments. I watch and admire these videos as they provide real-life examples of science in motion. I find myself saving videos I hope to recreate for my children when they’re of the right age.
How to Learn from the YouTube Rabbit Hole
Finding yourself in a rabbit hole of educational videos is Continuing Education at it’s best. Continuing Education doesn’t have to be picking up a 10-pound textbook and sifting your way through the technobabble. Continuing Education works best when you can engage with the student. This is a basic form of hands-on learning. Hands-on learning is a learning method common to all creatures and is even possible in distance learning.
Humans have the luxury of being capable of learning in two forms; hands-on and written text. However, when you think about it, in order to get to the point of being able to learn via text, you have to learn that skill via a hands-on approach. No one is born with the ability to learn. In order to acquire this skill, someone has to show you how to cultivate it.
Circling back to the YouTube Rabbit Hole, this creates an amazing opportunity to conveniently learn via a hands-on approach. While I admit to being victim to the mindless rabbit holes, I can also say that I’ve learned more via productive videos than I might have ever learned from a picking up a textbook.
YouTube Can Help You Grow
I regularly venture down rabbit holes, pursuing information on topics that I need to know more about. Case in point: blogging. I started this blog as a means to connect with our platform users. However, I had no idea how to start a blog, either from a writing or a platforming perspective. I watched tons of videos of other established bloggers and learned from their experiences, which I also do when it comes to other business topics I need help with learning.
All in all, I believe that educational videos have the ability to accomplish much more than a standard textbook and in significantly less time. That is why we, at VTR, use story-based learning to teach people using the hands-on approach.
All that said, remember next time you find yourself feeling guilty for watching handfuls of YouTube videos that, so long as there’s a continuing education theme, you are doing yourself a positive service. Those videos don’t always have to be considered time wasters.
Article written by Vaughn Pourchot
Last updated March 10, 2023
