My Media Diet
To say the least, I have a close attachment to my phone. For the past week I have been tracking how much I am on my phone and what media I use the most. Though this week I used my phone more than usual, it is still way too much in my opinion. I use my phone regularly for communication and entertainment. Since I am using it on a daily basis, I don’t even notice how much time I spend on it. But after studying my media habits for the past week, I can see exactly how long I use my phone and what apps I use the most.
According to the past week I had spent, on average, 8 hours and 26 minutes per day on my phone. This isn’t entirely accurate since a lot of my screen time is on YouTube. I listen to a lot of podcasts and other long videos while I am doing homework or even doing the dishes. I like having some subtle background noise while I’m working on other things. Even though I’m not physically looking at my phone, it still reads it as additional screen time. In fact, as I am writing out this post I have my phone on listening to a podcast.
When I am not listening to things on YouTube, I talk with my friends quite a bit. The main apps I use for communicating with my friends are Snapchat, iMessage for iPhone, and Facebook Messenger. I am in a lot of group chats as a student, and sometimes it is easier for everyone else in the group to be on Facebook Messenger. Since I am in all of these group chats, I receive a lot of notifications on my phone.
With a lot of notifications coming in on my phone, I check it frequently. The screen time function on the iPhone can tell me how many notifications I receive per day on average. According to last week I received 261 notifications per day. I guess I could say I’m pretty popular. Along with notifications, my phone can tell me how many times I picked up my phone per week. On average I pick up my phone 197 times per day. It’s an interesting statistic that I would have never thought about if I didn’t monitor my phone usage.
The rest of the time on my phone is typically spent on social media. The amount of time I spend on social media isn’t as much as YouTube or texting, but it is still quite a lot to make up the rest of the 8 and a half hours. I enjoy seeing all of the content I follow on Twitter and Facebook, but there so many other things I could be doing besides scrolling through my feed.
After monitoring my media habits, I realize that I should be spending a lot less time on my phone. Even though most of the time is me listening to things on YouTube, the time spent on social media and texting is way too much. I should be finding other things to do with my time. It’s eye-opening for me to see how long I’m not focusing on the things I should be. It will make me feel better about myself not wasting my time staring at a screen.
