I suggest switching to NewPipe which works very well, unless you run a youtube channel or something. I don’t know how NewPipe deals with that. But if it’s just to watch videos it works like a charm.
Or I suggest you watch your videos through the Browser, the app is not really necessary (I guess your problems are with the app).
Maybe you could try going into advanced privacy and turning off the tracker blocking for youtube. i don’t use the youtube app so i can’t say that’ll help or anything but maybe it’s worth a shot.
If that doesn’t work as @MaMaTT88 said if you really do not want to move away from the default youtube experience you could try just using the website.
Also one of these apps might help make it feel less of a issue if you don’t want to use a browser for that task