Of course I haven't stopped watching them completely. I still look up the occasional recipe video. But I'm no longer in that state where I'd swipe through them endlessly whenever I had a spare moment. Even while thinking what a worthless way to spend time, I kept doing it anyway, so I'm really glad I stopped.
In short, what got me to stop was the YouTube app's time-management feature: I set the Shorts feed limit to zero minutes. I never watched short videos on platforms other than YouTube, like TikTok or Instagram, so dealing with the YouTube app alone was enough to cut off my route to them.
With the limit at zero minutes, after you watch one short and try to swipe to the next, it tells you you've hit your limit. You can ignore it and keep watching, but I wanted to stop in the first place, so it worked as a breakwater. I just stopped watching.
Not that quitting short videos means I've stopped wasting time on worthless things. I haven't. But I managed to quit something I'd been wanting to quit, and that was a good experience. I'd like to keep my distance from short videos from here on.