Isabel Schnaidt Blog Post #3

In the modern era, the use of technology has become second nature to most people. Our habits are so deeply ingrained that we don’t think twice about picking up our phone to check social media. This means that many of us don’t even know exactly what we do on our devices, despite using them for hours a day! To gain a little insight and improve my self-awareness in this area, I decided to record my screen time for a 24-hour period, beginning when I woke up on Monday, March 2nd. This exercise forced me to pay attention to what I was doing and allowed me to analyze the reasons and patterns behind my actions.

With all of the negative impacts of "screen time," I figured an in-depth look at how I use my time and how it makes me feel would be helpful.

Although I planned to begin recording my screen time as soon as I woke up, that ended up being far later than I intended. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to set any alarms for the morning and slept in until 1:30 p.m., meaning that my 24-hour observation period would actually stretch across two days. Once I woke up, I spent the first 17 minutes of my day responding to text and Snapchat messages from my friends and boyfriend, reassuring them that I didn’t die, but slept in, wildly late. After getting out of bed, I checked my emails and looked at social media, including my YouTube subscriptions, Twitter, Snapchat, and Tumblr. However, since I didn’t want to waste even more time, I only spent about five minutes briefly checking in. As I ate and got ready for the day, I turned on YouTube for something to listen to. From about 2:00 to 2:16 p.m., I watched videos by Brad Mondo on YouTube mobile, occasionally switching tabs to answer Snapchat messages and texts. I was interrupted by a phone call from my mom that went from 2:16 p.m. to 2:24 p.m., then I listened to YouTube podcasts until 3:04 p.m as I got things done around the house.

The rest of my day was dedicated to checking things off my to-do list. I started by turning on my laptop and looking through my emails once again. Then, I put on classical music on YouTube and did a reading for one of my classes from 3:10 to 3:49 p.m., though I was interrupted by responding to texts and Snapchat messages three times. Once I finished reading, I moved to writing up notes in Google Docs for another class, though I immediately found myself cycling through apps on my phone (YouTube and Twitter) out of boredom until about 4:00 p.m. After forcing myself to stop, I took notes until about 5:40 p.m., but I was distracted by my phone several times during that period. Only three minutes into working, I responded to a Snapchat message from my boyfriend. I was sidetracked by a group chat for six minutes at 4:19 p.m., and by Snapchat again at 4:46 p.m. At 5:04 p.m., my boredom was really ramping up, and I took five minutes to check Snapchat, look at Youtube, and check my to-do list in my Notes app.

When I took a break for dinner, I responded to my texts and Snapchat messages, used Tumblr to kill time, and then looked at some of the Snapchat stories on the Discover page (like People magazine). At 6:03 p.m., I went back to work, and continued listening to music and writing up my notes on Google Docs until 6:35 p.m. When I finished, I checked my to-do list on my phone again and tried to open Scholar. However, Scholar didn’t not load after multiple attempts, which I found to be a perfect excuse for me to procrastinate!

One of the Snapchat stories I often find myself looking at from the Discover page is People, even though I don't even enjoy reading it.

I began my spiral into procrastination by watching a couple YouTube videos by Karolina Żebrowska on my laptop until 7:08 p.m. After that, I continued to play videos in the background, but I focused on Snapchat messaging my boyfriend, texting my friends, and looking at Snapchat’s Discover page until 7:59 p.m., when my boyfriend called. I talked to him for 22 minutes as he drove home from work, then I took a break from technology until about 9:20.

However, coming back from this break didn’t make me any more productive! I caught up on text and Snapchat messages to my friends and boyfriend for ten minutes. Then, I opened YouTube on my laptop and watched videos (including a dog video, a lie detector interview video, and a music video, all of which were recommended to me) while sending text and Snapchat messages until about 10:22 p.m. At 10:24 p.m., I realized I needed to get it together, and opened up the same classical music on YouTube and did a reading for my senior seminar until 11:00 p.m. After sleeping in so long, I stayed up late and spent the night messaging my boyfriend on Snapchat and listening to podcasts on the Apple podcasts app. At about 2:00am, I made sure to set my alarms for the next day and opened up some ambient noise on YouTube before falling asleep.

I continued recording my screen usage the next morning to reach the 24 hour mark. Between 10:00 a.m. and 10:11 a.m., I snoozed my alarm repeatedly. Once I was semi-coherent, I took five minutes to respond to texts and Snapchat messages. After that, I mindlessly scrolled through Tumblr for 25 minutes in an attempt to wake myself up before getting out of bed. As I got dressed and ready to go vote, I listened to YouTube videos for 20 minutes. After voting, I posted my “I voted” sticker on my Snapchat story, messaged some people on the Discord messaging app at 11:46 a.m., and then checked my emails at 11:55 a.m. Once I got home, I played YouTube videos by JunsKitchen in the background from noon to 1:00 p.m. as I cleaned, occasionally checking my texts. At 1:01 p.m., my boyfriend called to tell me that he was outside. The last thing I did in my 24-hour observation period was checking my Apple Maps app to see how long it would take for us to drive to another friends’ house.

Throughout this experience, I recorded the timestamps of my screen usage in Google Docs, but planned to rely on my phone’s Screen Time function to determine the total amounts of time I spent using social media. However, it didn’t track my information on the two days I used it, saying I spent 0 seconds total on my phone. So instead, I roughly calculated the time myself by adding up the timestamps I manually recorded. I estimate that I spent about 327 minutes (or 5.45 hours) on YouTube (not including the ambient noise I fell asleep to), 119 minutes (or two hours) on Snapchat, 45 minutes on Tumblr, and less than two minutes on Twitter. This means I spent about 493 minutes total on social media, which is just over 8 hours. However, since a lot of that time was YouTube music or other videos being played in the background while I did other things, not all of this time represents active use. Additionally, while I spent the most total time on YouTube, I think that I spent the most time actively using Snapchat.

While my iPhone failed to capture my screen time, YouTube actually has a "time watched" function on the mobile app. Here is my time watched, which I captured on Thursday, March 5th.

I also noticed that I use different social media platforms for different reasons. Using the terms from Whiting & Williams’ (2013) breakdown of uses and gratifications theory on social media, I used Snapchat’s messaging function for social interaction, but used the Discover page to pass time and to relax (p. 366). YouTube was for entertainment (and to stream music that helped my productivity), and I used Tumblr to pass the time and relax (Whiting & Williams, 2013, p. 366). The way I used different platforms for different reasons reminded me of how Shah (2016) found that mobile-based social networking platforms tend to be very specialized. Rather than having one all-encompassing platform, mobile social media platforms need to be strung together if you want to form a more comprehensive identity (Shah, 2016). I think this definitely applies to my experience because with the exception of YouTube, I exclusively used social media on my phone.

The only original content that I posted was the picture of my “I voted” sticker on Snapchat. At the time, I didn’t even think about why I was posting it. In hindsight, it could be argued that this was an example of “clicktivism,” where I used social media to promote a cause (in this case, going to vote) rather than participating in real-life activism (Ross, 2019). This can be bad, because it often makes people feel like their online actions can replace things like attending protests. And while social media can be used for good, it does not necessarily make people more democratic or progressive (Fuchs, 2017, p. 70). However, I do think it is an important distinction that I didn’t replace voting with social media activity, but posted about the fact that I did it. And since many voters use the Internet to encourage their friends and family to vote, I don’t think what I did is uncommon, since I wasn’t attempting to bring radical change. It could also be argued that this was an example of impression management, because I didn’t actually mention what candidate I voted for. This is an example of self-censorship, which is often utilized in online impression management so avoid controversy. In this specific case, since I wasn’t sure exactly who might see my post, I censored myself to avoid potential conflict over political candidates with those who disagree with me (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 125).

This is the image that I posted to Snapchat after voting.

This period of observing my screen time has made me more aware of how often I pick up my phone without thought. Throughout the experiment, I actually think that I used my phone less than I would have otherwise, because I was consciously paying attention to my screen usage and exercised more self-control, doing things like waiting to answer text messages and restricting myself from picking up my phone. Additionally, I noticed that I didn’t even really enjoy a lot of the things that I did to pass time or procrastinate, like looking at the Snapchat Discover page; I just wanted a distraction when my attention wavered or when I was bored. While I don’t want to go through the process of recording every time I use a screen again, I think this has taught me that being more aware of what I am doing online can help me to minimize distractions and waste less time. It also helped me to learn why I do the things I do online, and encouraged me to stop doing the things I don’t really care about. Finally, it led me to really self-examine why I post things on social media. Since we spend so much time using technology, I think it’s really valuable to learn the reasons behind our behaviors, which can be done through self-monitoring and reflection.





References

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.

Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1), 114–133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313

Ross, L. (2019, August 17). I’m a black feminist. I think call-out culture is toxic. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/

Shah, S. (2016, May 14). The history of social networking. Digital Trends. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/

Whiting, A., & Williams, D. (2013). Why people use social media: A uses and gratifications approach. Qualitative Market Research 16(4), 362-369). doi:10.1108/QMR-06-2013-0041