Does Sharing Your YouTube Videos Hurt Early Channel Growth? The Not Sharing Theory.

I have been learning about starting a new channel lately in 2026 and some of the advice I have seen says to NOT share your channel with anyone and to just feed the algorithm the channel by providing the content and optimising your title, description and tags and letting YouTube find your audience for you versus sharing a video with friends and family who probably watch a 20 seconds and click off.

What are your thoughts on this? I am thinking it is best to do this with my new channel. YouTube are meant to show your video early on to a small tester audience then broadens its reach if does well to those with similar interests.

Quote from Symph

Pretty sure that's gonna depend on friends and family, it's hard to imagine that we can predict everyone's friends and family will not be interested in what they create. If you are just casually talking on stream, yeah maybe this is a good idea, since those people already know you and will find nothing novel about it. But if you make something artistic or that you really think is cool (comedy sketches, witty observations, etc) You're showing a side of yourself those people don't usually see, and if it's good and people genuinely like it, wouldn't your friends and family stick around to support it? I dunno this just doesn't feel like a "one size fits all" situation to me.

That is a very good point about I think it really depends on the channel type and audience youre aiming for. Like with music it is loved more or less universally, if you have a rock channel your family and friends may love listening to it. I used to support my old best friends band loads back in the day and loved hearing his new songs so it does seem case by case. With very niche stuff like say hot wheels race track content aimed at collectors that may not be the best to share as much as they arent likely to stay around long.