Reading into why I use Reddit
I love Reddit. I use it for entertainment, advice, procrastinating, even as a search engine to answer oddly specific questions such as how a blind cat finds its litter box. As much as I love Reddit, I do notice that I could definitely cut back on my usage as it takes away time and attention from more productive ventures. So, I’ve tracked my usage over the course of two days and have come up with some insights which explain why I’m on Reddit so much.
Due to the pandemic, I’m at home 99% of the time so instead of using my phone for Reddit, I use my laptop (I know this is weird and that Reddit was built for mobile — I have my reasons ok). Thus, I consulted my web browser’s history to see when I visited Reddit. Then, to track the duration of these sessions, I know that I regularly look at comments by new-tabbing posts, so this means that I can “sort-of” time the length of my Reddit sessions.
The main revelation I had with tracking my Reddit usage was that my avenue to usage was not always through seeking entertainment. This is where me using a laptop to go on Reddit became advantageous because in the history, I could actually see what kind of posts triggered my arrival to the site or caught my interest. The following connection circle models factors which contribute to my habit.
Through my history, it was interesting to see that a part of my usage did not start from Reddit’s homepage feed. A couple of examples include:
- Running a search on Google, often I’ll tack “reddit” to the end of it just because I know that if a Reddit post answering the question exists, the top comments will give me quick read options (versus having to read an entire article on a random website).
- After finishing a TV episode, I will usually look up its corresponding discussion post on Reddit to read comments, reactions, or insights populated by other fans of the show. As long as the TV show is recent (within the last 10 years) and had/has some popularity, I’m guaranteed to find the discussion posts.
I found that my familiarity with existing structures of Reddit paired with how reliably I can count on Reddit to give me what I’m looking for just makes me want to use Reddit even more.
Though when it comes to decreasing overall usage, it does boil down to wanting something entertaining to fill my time and then being stuck in a reinforcing feedback loop. I know that if I keep scrolling, I am guaranteed entertainment.
If I were to do things differently next time, I would want to log non-Reddit activities to spot any other cause-effect relationships contributing to my Reddit addiction. Looking at my time sheet, Friday resulted in more volume and longer overall usage time. Whereas Saturday had the longest session at 42 minutes, but for some reason not as many sessions. So, I wonder why I was on Reddit for 42 minutes as well as why I visited Reddit 10 times in one day? Both of these statistics seem strange and it would be interesting to get to the bottom of it.
