If I am wasting time with a smart device in my hand, I am either looking up Instagram hashtags or jumping from one Wikipedia article to another. However, while I don’t spend as much time on it as I do Instagram or Wikipedia, I do frequently surf YouTube. This morning a reader wrote into the local newspaper and stated he thought YouTube was making people dumber.

Do I think his point holds water? Well, I guess it depends on what you are watching, right? I doubt spending your hours viewing old WWF wrestling matches from the 1980’s will make you smarter. But dumber? I don’t really know.

What I do know is that I use YouTube to view three types of specific videos. Tonight I would like to share those with you.

Vacation Destination Review Videos – I know many people have made livings and established themselves as YouTube stars by reviewing products and food on YouTube. It is a really big deal. However, I don’t watch the teenager giving a testimonial about the latest hoverboard or the random dude offering his opinion on the Burger King hot dog. I don’t care about those reviews. However, I can’t thank enough the people who take time to review vacation destinations and hotels.

Although I go first to Instagram and Yelp/Trip Advisor when booking a hotel or an experience on a vacation, I always check YouTube before making any final decisions. God bless the people who take it upon themselves to show raw in-depth video tours of the hotel they stayed at while in Mexico or Hawaii. I am thankful to these detail oriented folks who show everything about the resort from the main lobby to the restaurant’s breakfast buffet to the toilet in the room. These amateur videos are thorough and honest and really help to tell a lot of the story. I always consult with YouTube before making a decision on where I am going to stay when out of town.

Music Videos – Call me boring on this front, but I get on YouTube for the main reason why millions of others do so: to listen to and watch music videos.

YouTube is home to thousands and thousands of great playlists covering any genre or theme you could ever want. You just pick your poison and press play and you have entertainment for hours. I mean you could search for a bagpipes mix and immediately have a 72 song playlist that will last you all day.

You can also rely on YouTube to fulfill your musical curiosities. Many times I will be listening to the radio and hear a song from an artist I don’t know and immediately ask myself, “What does this person look like?!”

A quick YouTube search solves that mystery! Additionally, other times I will hear a song from an artist I am already a fan of but haven’t seen that particular music video. Again, all I have to do is hop on YouTube and I can see if my vision I had in my head for the music video was correct or not.

Old School Shows and Newscasts – Whenever you feel nostalgic or want to see what a certain actor or celebrity looked like 30 years ago, all you need to do is look to YouTube. The service is a library for pretty much every television show and movie that was ever made.

Want to relive an old Saturday morning cartoon? What about a TGIF show from your preteen days? Feel like viewing the opening credits/theme song from a children’s program you can barely remember watching as a toddler? With YouTube you can travel back in time and watch basically anything you want. I recently viewed a Rugrats  holiday episode and an old sitcom I watched on Nick at Nite over two decades ago.

I also enjoy watching old newscasts. All you really have to do is type in the name of the station and you can get a pretty entertaining synopsis of the history of the particular area while also enjoying some pretty hilarious “throwback” shots of the anchors and reporters you might still be watching to this day. I know when I look up Spokane stations such as KXLY and KHQ I can’t help but smile.

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YouTube might not be my go-to time waster but it is a pretty solid third or fourth option. What do you use YouTube for the most? I am curious to know. Don’t Blink.