My Media Diet
Growing up in this generation technology is a vital part of our every day lives. We use it for basically everything and I don’t think people are really seeing what our society has come to because of it. For me, it wasn’t until I began to track my media use that I fully grasped the concept of how often I actually was on my phone or even picked it up. This experiment was definitely an eye-opening experience for me.
Seeing my media use in numbers and it being pretty high made me realize that it’s worse than what I thought. I was shocked at the numbers because the amount of times I get on my phone is something I never paid attention to so it just put everything into perspective. For seven days I tracked my media use using the new IPhone feature, Screen Time. Screen time allowed me to see everything from total notifications, pickups, weekly total, etc.
Overall, I spent 47 hours and 17 minutes on my phone during the past seven days across different media platforms. Screen Time separates your total time into three categories called, Social Networking, Other and Entertainment. My Social Networking category had the highest weekly total with a total of 32h and 17 minutes.
When I saw this number, it made the most sense for that to be the highest out of the categories because I know I spend most of my time on my phone checking social media and reading posts. It was just interesting to see in numbers because I would’ve never guessed that. My most used social apps are Instagram, Messages, and Twitter. Instagram came at first with a total of 9 hours and 13 minutes for the 7 day period.
During this time period I had 200 pickups per day making a total of 1,400 for the week. Along with that, I had 270 notifications per day making a total of 1,890 for the week as well. My messages are the top app for notifications and the first app visited after a pickup.
At first these numbers had me surprised because like I mentioned before I do these things so unconsciously, that I don’t even think I do it a lot. After I sat and thought about it, it makes sense because I do pick my phone up lot whether it’s just to look at a notification or respond to a message or something.
I also noticed how my time on my phone peaked during the morning hours and the weekend. This makes the most sense because I have afternoon classes so in the morning I’m on my phone and preparing for the day. As far as the weekend goes, I don’t have anything to do so I have a lot of free time to post and surf the web.
This experience gave me a whole new outlook on how to use my phone going forward. I’ve realized that I depend on it a lot throughout my day due to boredom or just wanting to see what’s happening in the world. I think my numbers are pretty high therefore I want to find time to detach myself from social media to do more productive things.
