This is an opinion piece. The views are the author’s own.
You finish an episode, reach for the remote and, before your hand gets there, the next one has already started. Or you open YouTube to watch one cooking video and look up 40 minutes later, three topics away from where you began. None of that was your decision. It was the default.
My argument is simple: autoplay should be something we switch on, not something we have to hunt down and switch off.
The platforms already know this
Here’s the detail that convinced me. According to YouTube’s own help page, autoplay is turned off by default for users aged 13 to 17. Teens can turn it on if they want, but the starting point is off.
That’s a sensible choice. It also raises an obvious question: if not automatically rolling into the next video is the healthier default for a 16-year-old, why is the opposite the right default for everyone else? Adults aren’t immune to the pull of “just one more.”
Netflix, to its credit, has a built-in brake. It asks “Are you still watching?” after three episodes in a row without you touching the controls, or, on TVs and streaming devices, after three episodes and 90 minutes of uninterrupted viewing. Netflix frames this as saving your place and your data. Fine. But it’s still an admission that endless playback isn’t always what people want.
Defaults are decisions
Most of us never change most settings. That makes the default the real choice, and right now the choice is made for us in favor of more watching. Those trailers that start the moment you hover over a title? Same idea.
I don’t think autoplay is evil. It’s useful when you’re cooking or folding laundry and want a playlist to keep going. That’s exactly why it should be offered, clearly and once, and then left to us.
Until then, turn it off yourself
- YouTube: on a computer, click the Autoplay switch at the bottom of the video player. In the mobile app, tap the Autoplay toggle at the top of the player, or find it under Settings.
- Netflix previews: in a web browser, go to your Account page, choose Profiles, pick a profile, open Playback settings and turn off Autoplay previews. It’s set per profile, so repeat it for everyone in the house who wants it.
Try it for a week. The pause at the end of an episode is small, but it hands the decision back to you. That’s where it belonged in the first place.
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