Blog #3

In today’s day and age, it’s difficult for people to “unplug” from technology and social media. Personally, I think that I could do a 24 hour “cleanse” without social media, but I could not last if it involved technology. Considering that four out of the five classes I’m taking this semester all involve PowerPoint lectures and not discussion-based lectures, I would find this very difficult to do. Also, I would find this even more difficult because I wouldn’t be able to get information from my coach regarding the plans for the week, such as practice times and departure times for away games. Instead, for this blog assignment, I decided to monitor my screen time for 24 hours.

I decided to monitor my screen time on Monday, February 24^th since I had most of my classes that day and practice in the afternoon, which is a pretty typical day for me. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning, and immediately checked my phone until about 7:50am. I went through Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat first, and then went through my emails to make sure I didn’t miss any announcements about class. After this, I got out of bed and started to look for a podcast to listen to while I was getting ready for class. 

I left my dorm room around 8:45am and listened to music on my way to class for about 10 minutes. For my first class of the day, we normally have PowerPoint notes, but we watched a movie instead, so I was staring at a screen for the entire 50 minutes of class. After class, I normally go back to my room to finish up homework for my 11am class. For that day, I had finished my homework the night before, so I had some free time. From 10:05am until 10:38am I sat at my desk and watched Netflix while I was eating breakfast. While walking to my 11am class, I checked social media from 10:45am until 10:55am. My 11am class has a strict no technology policy and all of our lectures are class discussions, so I didn’t pick up my phone again until 12pm. 

After class, I went to our locker room to change so I could go see our athletic trainer to get my physical therapy done. While I was doing physical therapy, I was on Tik Tok for about 20 minutes just to pass the time. After this, I got back to my room at 1:05pm and did homework on my laptop from 1:10pm until 1:40pm. 

My last class of the day is my business class at 2pm. For this class, all of our lectures are through PowerPoint slides. Not only will I be staring at a screen for the entire class, I also take notes for this class on my laptop, so I often feel like I’m staring at screens for double the amount of time. We took notes from 2:10pm to 2:50pm. After class, I immediately go back to our locker room because I have practice right after class. We’re not allowed to have our phones out during practice, so I had a little bit of a break from 3pm until 6pm. 

After practice, I immediately checked my phone for about 10 minutes while walking back to our locker room. Typically, I listen a podcast or listen to music while walking back to my dorm after practice, but instead I walked back with a teammate, so my screen time was down during that time.

I got back to my room around 6:30pm. At 6:45pm, I put on a YouTube video on my laptop while I was cooking dinner until around 7:15pm. 

From 7:20pm until 8:20 pm, I watched Netflix on my laptop while I was eating dinner and packing for an away trip later in the week. Every night, I try to talk to my mom, but I had a super busy weekend and I didn’t get to talk to her much. Since we hadn’t really talked for a couple of days, we FaceTimed for over an hour and talked about school, softball, and my dogs. 

From 10pm until 10:50pm I read for one of my media classes and did research for a group project for my business class. During this time, I took some social media breaks in between tasks just to give myself some time to do something mindless that doesn’t stress me out as much. 

Finally, I went to bed around 11pm, and checked Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat one more time. Normally I end up falling asleep right after this, but I couldn’t. Instead of trying to make myself fall asleep, I went on Tik Tok for about 15 minutes and set my alarm for class the next day before finally dozing off. 

The next day started the same way. I woke up at 7:30 in the morning and went through all of my social media accounts to get caught up with everything. 

After analyzing my screen time for a full 24 hours, it made me realize how often I look at a screen. I often don’t really think about looking at a screen during class because I feel more productive in class than in my room. While looking at my screen time on my phone for the day, I spent a total of 3 hours and 20 minutes on my phone. 2 hours and 11 minutes of that time was spent on social networking. Although my phone tracked my screen usage, I had to personally the time that I spent looking at my laptop and screens in class. The total amount of time that I spent on my laptop and screens in class ended up being 4 hours and 13 minutes. This means that the amount of time that I spent looking at screens just for that day ended up totaling 7 hours and 33 minutes. 

Honestly, just looking at that amount of time seems crazy to me. I knew that I spent a lot of time looking at screens throughout the day, but definitely not 7 hours and 33 minutes’ worth. I already try to take breaks from screens throughout the week, but this has really made me think about how often I should take them.