I spend a lot of time on YouTube; in fact, I spend quite a bit more time there than I should.
A fair portion of that time is well-spent, and I find some quite informative videos or ones that I reflexively approve of watching. However, a lot is wasted time, which I spend either on Let's Plays, or low-content videos which are only making some slightly-politically-charged point I already agree with. But by far the worst use of time is Shorts.
Shorts are always a rabbit hole, a time sink, a horrible trap where whole hours can disappear, without a single good lesson or substantive relaxation in return. YouTube would be a better place without Shorts, but there's not built-in way to get rid of them: you can ask for fewer to be displayed on the home screen, but there will always be a link on the side-bar, plus they can be linked from other videos. YouTube doesn't want you to escape Shorts, so it doesn't make it easy to ignore them.
AdBlock to the rescue! With uBlock origin you get an addon which is both an ad-blocker, but also lets you install custom rules to block parts of a page, or you can classify whole domains as ads and prevent them from showing up at all.
Here are some rules you can install in the My filters
section of uBlock origin to remove all mention of Shorts from YouTube, and (partially) claim back your attention.
! Remove Shorts from sidebar youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer:has-text(Shorts) youtube.com##ytd-mini-guide-entry-renderer:has-text(Shorts) ! Remove Shorts shelf from homepage and feeds youtube.com##ytd-reel-shelf-renderer youtube.com##ytd-rich-shelf-renderer:has(a[href*="/shorts/"]) ! Remove Shorts from search results youtube.com##ytd-video-renderer:has(a[href*="/shorts/"]) youtube.com##ytd-item-section-renderer:has(ytd-reel-video-renderer) ! Remove Shorts tab from channel pages youtube.com##yt-tab-shape:has-text(/^Shorts$/) ! Remove Shorts button from video player youtube.com##.ytp-button[data-tooltip-target-id="ytp-autonav-toggle-button"]:has-text(Shorts)
I also have a full site block for facebook and tiktok, just in case there are cross-site trackers that they run that I should be blocking.
||facebook.com ||tiktok.com
Hope that helps!