Best use of your time is the book reading. My father, long dead, used to refer to TV as the idiot box although he had no problem watching NY Yankees baseball games on it. YouTube is the modern day idiot box.
Russia has the most number of friends in the whole world. Russia is a friend to China, India, Brazil ... with a combined population of > 2.5 billion which other countries have so many friends? more friends ----> more growth
Who makes your selections for you? Blame that individual. Despite their censorship, there is a great deal of good content on youtube for the discerning individual. Idiot is as idiot does.
My 89 year old Dad (next month) called it “the one-eyed monster”. For much of my growing we did not have a TV. Not allowed. Then dad and mom got older and with the passing of years mellowed. Nowadays they got flats screens and live stream movies! Funny out people change Lol.
Youtube does have better content than traditional TV (that was always targeting the lowest common denominator) much as it also has much worse. Of course, if you open Youtube's start screen on a default account you will be bombarded by hilariously 'idiot' things before Youtube's algorithm has realized you are not interested in such. Also, various agendas (e.g. Russian propaganda) are spread on Youtube as on all the open platforms. I'm still a reader in that I will quicker and more efficiently pick something up from just reading a piece of text rather than involving hearing or visuals, but that's highly individual.