Technology Mindfulness
I find myself in 2020 with an interesting duality regarding my smartphone usage. On the one hand, I am a full-time student taking online classes, I pay my rent and utilities from my smartphone, I live away from my family who I need to communicate with, and I have a part-time job which requires me to work on my phone and respond to emails. I use these factors to justify the time I spend on my phone. On the other hand, though, I recognize that I do spend time on Facebook, Instagram, and have recently been obsessed with playing Tetris. Besides blogging my experience for my English course, I am doing this for my own mental health and well-being. When the “Moment” usage tracker app asked if I wanted to allow notifications, I hesitated — I finally live on my own, so do I really want someone or something else telling me what to do? After a little deliberation, I decided it was more important to be reminded to look outside of my iPhone to pass the time. Ignorance isn’t always bliss, especially when it comes to a device that is most likely affecting my moods and energy. Over the next couple months, I hope to see some improvement in my dependency, and maybe even see a change in myself as a result.
Blog #1
For this week’s entry, we had to take an online quiz about our smartphone habits (results above). To be honest, I am skeptical about my results. I agree that I spend a good amount of time on my phone, but a behavioral addiction? I’ve tried and succeeded at giving up my phone before for a set period of time, so I’m not sure if this accurately represents me. A psychiatrist seems a bit extreme — if I need to see someone, so does everyone else in the world over the age of 5. Do I spend a lot of time on my smartphone? Sure. Am I dependent on my smartphone? It’s a tricky subject, and the truth is I don’t know. I’m interested to see how Medium tracks my usage, and what truths will reveal themselves to me by the end of the semester.
Blog #2
It’s hard to answer the question of what my smartphone is “primarily” used for. In a broad sense, communication? But that seems like a cop-out, catch-all phrase to avoid digging deep into my particular habits. The truth, though, (I think) is that it varies day to day. Some days it seems like I have text conversations open with twenty different people, while other days it’s radio silence on that end. I would say I use my email quite a bit, but I clean it out in the morning, then don’t think about it again until I get a notification or need to email a professor or colleague. The social media(s) combined are probably where most of my time goes, honestly. I use Facebook because I’m 70 years old, and I have two separate Instagram accounts — one for my “real” life, and one that only my close friends are supposed to see. I like to be in the loop, and see what my friends and family are up to. A lot of my friends have babies now, so I get to watch them grow up in a way through social media.
As for estimating the time I spend on my phone each day, I get to cheat a little. When I installed the Moment app for this project, I enabled notifications, so I get an alert when I use my phone for 30 minutes, an hour, hour and a half, and so on. However, I don’t think these numbers are always accurate. It counts the minutes while I use my GPS, even if I barely acknowledge it while I drive. It counts minutes when I’m listening to a podcast on a walk, or driving to work. These things technically count as screen time, but I wouldn’t label these activities where I am actively using my phone. I’m going to estimate an average of 2 hours a day spent on my phone, as well as an average of 50 checks. I guess time will tell how close my estimations are!
Blog #3
The first thing most people notice about my phone is how organized it is. And yes, I organized it by color. I take pride in this fact. My apps are a little bit of everything, but I think it says a lot about me as a person. I’ve got my banking apps, apps for stores and restaurants that I like, some games (which I don’t play often but keep on there for the aesthetic of the folders), and social media/communication apps. It feels weird to say that I have any “favorite” apps for some reason, but if I had to pick, it would probably be Instagram and Spotify. I’m not sure if these are my top 2 most used apps, but they are probably pretty close.
Instagram, I would imagine, is probably a pretty popular answer by other people my age, but it really is the most convenient place to catch up on events in my friends’ lives. A lot of my younger friends don’t even have Facebook pages, so I can connect with most people through Instagram. In addition to entertainment and connection, it has other practical uses, too. I made a hair appointment through Instagram DMs with a new stylist a few days ago. I also made my personal account a “business” page, so I can promote my theatre/dance work and keep track of engagement on my posts. I think in today’s world, it is important for actors and performers to utilize Instagram because it is so universal.
Though Instagram is probably my most versatile app, my actual favorite is definitely Spotify. My family bought Spotify when it first became popular, and I swear by it. In my opinion, it is by far the most user-friendly music app, and it has everything I could ever want to listen to in one place. It is easy to make playlists and to use the app for the dance classes I teach. I also like the public playlist feature, where you can collaborate on playlists with other Spotify users. My favorite part, though, is the “Daily Mix” and “Discover” playlists that the app curates to fit my individual taste based on my prior listening. I know that this is a tool the company uses to get me to listen to more, but it works and I like to utilize it.
Blog #4
This blog post is a check-in on my progress using the Moment app so far. I would like to first say that this app is hard to use and the graphs are not super user friendly either. I’ve tried to export my data multiple times, and it doesn’t work, so I can’t see a detailed summary of my data… but I digress.
As of today, October 29, I have been using the app for about two months now. Over this entire period, I have racked up 138 hours and 41 minutes of screen time and 2,852 pick ups. If I take this to my calculator, this data divided by an approximated 60 days of use means that I spend about 2 hours and 20 minutes a day on my smartphone, and pick it up around 48 times a day.
My prediction from a few weeks ago was 2 hours a day with 50 checks, so my estimations were pretty accurate! My lifestyle is pretty busy, so the checks don’t surprise me, as my phone lights up whenever I pick it up. I am satisfied in this area. For screentime, 2 hours and 20 minutes is pretty close to my original guess, but I would still like to bring this number down a bit. I would like to get this down to 2 hours or less by the end of the semester, though I’m not sure how possible this will be with my usage during work, etc. This project is definitely making me more aware of how present I am in my life, and how much time I spend engaging with online platforms.
Blog #5
Our challenge for this blog post was to choose and implement 2 ways to mitigate smartphone usage in our daily lives. In the article, “Smartphone Addiction: A 12-Step Cure”, some easy solutions are offered. Step 11, for example, suggests installing an app that tracks your usage. Since I already completed this, I’m already a twelfth of the way there! Some suggestions are definitely more achievable than others for me. For example, changing my nightly ritual (step 5) from scrolling on my phone to reading a book seems like an easy change to make. I often read before bed anyway, so making this a nightly event would be easy and beneficial. Another step I can definitely implement is number 8, to turn off notifications. For a long time I actually did have them all silenced so I could take my phone into classes, but now that they’re online, I’ve changed it to buzzing every time I get a text or an email. This is one I could probably fix and get used to easily.
On the other hand, I am more hesitant about shutting off my email at a certain time (step 1), as I use this mostly for work and school, and could be receiving important messages. However, the article makes a good point about setting boundaries — maybe I should consider actually prioritizing myself instead of work at night!
Blog #6
A few days ago, I tried the phone-ditching experiment — where you lock your smartphone in your room for a whole day. I was fairly busy with classes and homework, so I didn’t think about my phone as much as I expected to. However, there were definitely a few times when I thought about breaking the experiment to check if I had any messages. These were the few moments of anxiety, but I found them to be fleeting. I felt more present in the world around me, which included recognizing how much the people around me were using their phones. This experiment definitely gave me a lot of perspective on my own usage, and how the future could be if I tried to implement this a little more often in my own life.
Blog #6
This week’s task was to try a mindfulness exercise aligned with technology. The only thing I had to do was hold my phone. And breathe. A lot of interesting thoughts came up I found as I was trying this out. Normally during a meditation, I am able to immediately focus on my breath, but I found this a bit harder, as my eyes were open and I was “distracted” by the glowing screen in my hand. I didn’t necessarily feel an impulse to open anything or do anything, but this did make me feel restless and a bit frustrated. I suppose this is the idea of boredness at work. I am in the same trap of much of the population — believing that being bored is a useless state and that I should be doing something at all times.The restlessness seemed to come in bursts too. I would feel instantly like giving up, but reminding myself to focus back on the breath would alleviate that feeling for a few beats. I think overall the narrative that I have bought the most into is that my smartphone gives me power. By being able to connect with so many people and build my brand on social media, etc., I am powerful when I am able to use my phone. So the flip side of that would obviously be feeling powerless without it. I am working on shifting that narrative and working towards using my phone to benefit my real life instead of trying to create another virtual life.
Blog #8 — The Conclusion
I had a bit of trouble with the Moment app, not being able to export my data, so this is an amalgamation of the data I could grab from Moment, combined with Apple Screen Time, which I have used for a shorter amount of time. I find Moment hard to use because it only gives you graphs, not very many concrete numbers, and without the premium subscription, there is only so much data it will allow me to have; however, I tried my best.
The first chart I created is based on my last 10 days of use, and shows how much time I have spent on each app. Almost 7 hours spent on Facebook is shocking and eye-opening. I definitely want to get this time down in the future. I will admit, with Thanksgiving and lots of downtime, this week’s data is a little skewed, but I still believe this to be indicative of my overall normal habits. Minutes on Waze do not bother me, as this app is somewhat essential to me being able to get to where I need to go. However, the social apps listed are definitely taking away too much of my attention.
In this next chart, I wanted to view the correlation between number of notifications I get each day (red) vs. how many times I pick up my phone (blue). It seems that there is a slight relationship between the two — it is more likely that I will pick up my phone more times if I have more notifications. It is interesting to see the leap in pickups on 12/1, as this is the day I teach dance, and am therefore going to change the music on my phone frequently. I am surprised, though, to find that the correlation isn’t as strong as I thought it would be. My pick-up average over these 10 days is about 78, and my notification average is 91. It is interesting to see how the notifications fluctuate a lot, while apart from a few outliers, the pickup number stays pretty solid around that 78. Moment, however, says that my average pickups per day is 54. It is hard to know which app is more accurate about this, as the algorithms for both probably factor in different things.
Looking back at my goal of getting screen time down to two hours, it is harder than I thought it would be. Currently, Moment reports that I am at an average of 145 minutes, or 2 hours and 25 minutes of screen time per day. Earlier in the semester, I was at 2 hours and 20 minutes a day, so I have stayed pretty much stagnant in that area. This class and this project has definitely made me more mindful of my usage, but the truth is that it is hard to break such concrete habits. I got my first smartphone in middle school, so this is a habit more than 10 years in the making. Some days I really try hard to resist the urge to check my phone, while other days it is easy for me to fall back into wasting away my afternoon checking Facebook. It definitely has an impact on all aspects of my life. My social life is enhanced but also inhibited by my smartphone usage. My professional life is enhanced by my ability to use Spotify and email colleagues, so I don’t think it necessarily hinders my abilities in this area. In my school life though, it is definitely a distraction from my work, and I could be more productive without it.
Moving forward, I will keep Moment installed on my phone, and keep the notifications on to remind me of the things I learned in this class. I am still working on trying to get my screen time down, and to help with this, I set an app limit on Facebook and Instagram to one hour each. Hopefully this will make me more aware of the time I am spending on social media, and help me to regulate my usage. I am also setting a goal of not using my phone in bed. A lot of time could be avoided on my phone if I just went to sleep in bed instead of checking my phone before I close my eyes. Hopefully with these changes, I can implement a healthier technological lifestyle and begin to experience boredom again.