I think it’s safe to say that the results of recording phone usage within the time span of 48 hours are surprising. What I personally found most surprising was the amount of time I spent on my phone in correlation to how many times I picked up my phone. In total, I had recorded 57 uses of my phone. Within 48 hours, I had spent 407 minutes and 8 seconds on my phone–that’s nearly seven hours! I also noticed that the activities that my phone usage interrupted was either studying or walking, which was something that did not surprise me. I often find myself using my phone to distract myself from things that I need to do (procrastination at its finest!)
Out of the 57 times I picked up my phone, I either sent a text message or checked the time a total of 38 times. This makes me wonder about the convenience of text messages, and how often I rely on it as a form of instant communication. With me, I have little to no patience with phone calls, which is a funny thing because I have to wait for the other person to text back in order to respond. It’s an odd cycle.
As for the social media, I recorded twelve total usages, and seven occasions where I used both social media and texting. I found that I used Snapchat more than any other form of media, with the rare use of Twitter and Facebook. Once again, I noticed that the time where I should have been studying was replaced by the use of social media, which certainly did not surprise me!
From the start of this assignment, I figured that it wouldn’t be that difficult to write down every time I used my phone and all that came along with it. The more I found myself writing things down, I became more and more frustrated with the usage of my phone. I dreaded wasting away the hours on social media, and spending leisure time on the things that were fun when I didn’t have to document it all. It was certainly an interesting exercise for myself–writing down each time I used my phone, only to put my phone back down in order to document it all. A pen in exchange for a keyboard and vice versa became a vicious cycle, and while I certainly value both mediums of communication, the main thing I took from this assignment was that I spend WAY too much time figuring out how to waste my time on things that I shouldn’t.
-Kelly Smith (kannesmith.com)