The phone has been such an integral part of my life since I got one in 2007. The relationship that i have with it sometimes seems stronger than with my actual friends and family by the way I cherish the world that it has been immersing me in since I got one. This relationship is so strong that when my phone was stolen a few weeks ago, I almost shed a tear while simultaneously having a panic attack.
The power that this phone has manifested throughout the years of its existence really proved itself when conducting this assignment or experiment. Take a look at the results I gathered from the 48 hour period of logging every interaction on my phone:
Using the pen and notebook to record every interaction with my phone was interesting for many reasons. First of all, I was thrown between tradition and modern day technologies by using all the materials such as the notebook, pen and phone. All three themselves have so much power and combining them for this project was interesting. It was also interesting that my usage time seemed to flip completely; using the phone seemed to decrease while it took more time to write and properly log the results.
Results:
How many Times I used the phone: 73 Times
Hours on the phone: 3 Hours about 40 mins
Textual Activity: 52 Times
Social Activity: 21 Times
Texting: 52
Twitter: 1
Instagram: 2
Email: 6
Facebook: 8
Calls: 4
Activities that I did on the phone remained simple; texting, phone calls, emails, social media outlets. I did not make those unnecessary phone checks during the 48 hour period.
To the point that using these communication platforms (pen and notebook) is similar to being stuck in the newer digital age. Going back to using a pen was a stretch since I rarely use both materials in my classes here. It also allowed me to reflect on how different my life was as a freshman or a senior in high school versus the technologies used as a Senior in college. Laptops and phones were practically never used freshman year of college and now if I did not have either or, I might as well skip class or stay home, nothing can be done without them.
My use of the phone also was noted. When I began the project, I was very much still using my phone the same in terms of how many times I would check it and so forth. However, after a few hours and already getting impatient with logging all of my actions while using it, I started to cut back on the usage. It was a good thing that I did this project during preparing for midterms or else these results could be very different. At first, it seemed like it was difficult to cope with not being able to check Instagram, Facebook and text messages. But, over time, I was able to deal with the fact that I was going to survive without checking the status update every two minutes.
As I wrapped up the two-day project, I ended up taking a lot more key learnings with me than I first imagined. I realized that I could walk from class to class without taking my phone out to check it, that I could wait the 5 minutes before class started without taking it out as well and focus on catching up on another assignment or check out a news article. It was a way for me to dial (no pun intended) back into my community and allow myself to reconnect with what was going on in front of me and not on that small screen that has been taking over my life for the past few years. Honestly, being able to take that 5 minutes to check 6abc or AOL news was great because I was able to speak of recent events and stories that everyone else had been talking about and so forth.