YouTube addiction: binge watching videos became my 'drug of choice'

Domingo Cullen recalls how the site's recommendation engine left him 'entranced by thoroughly useless information'

The wild elephants turn back to salute the men who have saved their baby from the ditch. They raise their trunks aloft with wondrous grace in a moment shared between man and beast. I don't blink, hardly twitch. Lit by the glow of the laptop screen, my face shows no flicker of emotion. The video finishes and the next one begins to load. "Electrocuted squirrel gets CPR by kind man."

Unbeknownst to me, the daylight has faded across to the other side of the Earth, and I am in darkness. I am lying on my bed in the fetal position, as I have been for three hours straight " watching YouTube.