In this day and age, phones are pretty much necessary to communicate with each other, especially among my demographic of college kids. As avid users of social media, we rely on our phone as a resource to connect us to our favorite sites. Whether it’s our favorite gossip blog, photo-sharing network, or swipe-to-hookup app, we stay linked in. It was interesting to see how often and for what purpose people use their phone in a period of over 2 days.
Going into this project, I was definitely a little fearful of what the results would be. I wasn’t really scared of what others would think about my diary, but more cautious of how dependent on my phone I have become. Armed with my handy dandy notebook and pilot pen, I was ready to start. So here it goes, below is my phone diary based on a 48-hr period of usage.
Phone Usage Log:
Total Time Spent on Phone: 484 minutes
Total Interactions with Phone: 24
Social Interactions: 12
- Facebook- 35+ mins
- Instagram: 30-45 mins
- Twitter: 4+ mins
- Snapchat: 9+ mins
- Talking on the Phone: 15
- Alarm: 3 minutes
Textual Interactions: 3
- Studying: 120 mins
- Texting: 30-45 mins
Mixed Interactions (Textual and Social): 4
- Time Spent: 34 minutes
Activities Interrupted: 10
- sleep
- class
- eating
- discussion
- walking
- getting prepared for interview
- watching television
- getting dressed
- getting ready to go out
- talking to friends
Day 1
Day 2
The results of the phone diary blog was actually interesting. I think my hypothesis was pretty correct about how much I would use my phone. My total interaction with my phone took up about 1/3 of my day (484 minutes/1440 minutes). That’s about 8 hours using my phone throughout the day. I also thought it was interesting that I only used my phone to make a call about once during the time period, and it was for about 15 minutes. I actually think that would probably be the consensus among most of the class phone diaries. Most people, unless they would be calling their family for long periods of time, most likely would not be indicate speaking on the phone as one of their most time-consuming activities.
I used my phone on Wednesday, October 7 and Thursday, October 8, 2015. I think that what two days the experiment was conducted during played a big part on my phone usage and interactions. I had a very big policy test on Wednesday, which is why studying took up a lot of time. Instead of taking out my laptop each time, I could just bring up the powerpoints and lectures on my phone via the Blackboard mobile application. I also had multiple interviews, so I spent a lot of time preparing for the interviewing, making sure I was well educated about the company and researching common interview questions, tips, and techniques. I wonder how it would have went under different circumstances. Overall, this project was very insightful in understanding the relationships between college students and their phones.