For me it's always been vocab first. There are hundreds of words I know, but can't really read. This isn't necessarily a result of "studying" though, just many years of exposure. For example I knew 二酸化炭素 long before I was able to read it.
Learning kanji through words is easier but takes more time and learning is kanji alone is more efficient but also more difficult. And also meaningless. Because reading don't necessarily have a meaning (which makes it harder to remember by themselves).
Doing both at the same time is a bit overkill but at the same, I like to "master" my kanji. Because when I encounter a new word later, I can, more or less, guess the meaning and/or the reading most of the time. There even a few time where upon just hearing a new word in a conversation, I can guess the kanji of that word from the context and my internal kanji database. Which fell really great when you are at that point xD.
But in the same time, I "only" know a thousand kanji. And at the same level, I see plently of people who know far more kanji than me because I'm "overdoing" it (like for the basic kanji, I know about 150-200 words per kanji, so.... xD). So yeah up to you :3.
watching japanese stuff on yt!! i can get a glimpse into what most ppl there find funny and interesting, so i also culture myself whilst also learning new vocab and reinforcing concepts i already know. it's great! althought rather time consuming.
