I feel this, particularly as a parent. It's difficulty watching your kids get lost in the algorithm. We regularly discuss this with them and they agree with our perceived harm, but it's just too difficult to resist. Heck, even I get lured into (doom)scrolling every now and then.
I've setup ad-filtering using pihole, where possible, but I'd prefer not to block youtube as a whole. But I'm definitely considering that in the future, to protect my family.
Imo the best thing that can work is introducing delays to the loading of videos, increasing as time goes by. Youtube introduced sth like this to me, when they were presumable trying "punishing" users with adblockers, and it worked as a charm to get me disengage from the youtube rabithole. A lot of such addiction dynamics work based on how fast getting the reward is, and these interuptions disturb this.
I've setup ad-filtering using pihole, where possible, but I'd prefer not to block youtube as a whole. But I'm definitely considering that in the future, to protect my family.