My Relationship With My Phone
When I began tracking my phone usage, I didn’t know what to expect. I was honestly fearful to see how much time was wasted every week scrolling through pointless content.
Thankfully, the results were better than expected.
My relationship with my phone is a lot different than what most people would expect. Being a college student working towards a media degree, you might assume a lot of time is spent on social media.
A majority of college students spend most of their time on the phone every week. Due to the popularity of social media, most college students are interacting with it throughout each day. However, social media is rarely used during my free time. I’ll occasionally scroll through my feeds to keep up with news and friends, but hardly ever post on social media.
Instead, I enjoy consuming different types of media. Playing video games for a couple hours almost daily and watch a few movies every week are what use up free time. YouTube also fills a lot of time, but watching videos on a small screen isn’t enjoyable. YouTube is watched almost exclusively on the TV unless we’re viewing a short video while at dinner with friends.
Whenever a question arises, My phone is used to look it up. This makes Google Chrome one of the apps that is used often. I also host a couple events in my room every week, so my messaging app and Snapchat are used just to set up meeting times. Having conversations through text isn’t enjoyable because of its restrictions of expression.
This explains how I have 141 unlocks in a week with only six and a half hours of screen time. I’m constantly unlocking my phone, replying to a text, and putting it to sleep again. My screen is never on for long periods of time.
Even with my short amount of screen time, I still feel like I use it too much. I’m a creative person that is constantly working on a new project, so getting distracted by Instagram for fifteen minutes feels like wasted time. But who knows, maybe it’s good for me to take a break once in a while.
