For this assignment, I had to carry around a little notebook for two days (including one weekday) and record any time that I used my phone for social interactivity, textual interactivity, or both. This became irritating quickly, to say the least. I didn’t realize just how much I was on my phone until I had to write it down each time.
After analyzing my data I came up with this quantitative information:
- I used my phone 102 times.
- I used the phone for a total of 94.8 minutes, or 1.58 hours.
- Over the 48 hours, I used my phone 3.3% of the time.
- I had 2 Social Interactivity instances (talking on the phone).
- I had 11 Textual Interactivity instances (checking time, setting phone alarm, checking for text messages, checking Facebook notifications but not responding to them, and reading text messages).
- I had 89 instances where both types occurred (reading/replying to text messages and Tweeting).
- The activities that were happening while I was using my phone were either: watching tv, eating, doing homework, walking to class, sitting in class, or nothing.
While this was an interesting experiment, I wouldn’t want to have to do it again. I found myself modifying my normal habits to try to cut down on how much I was looking at my phone. (For example, I checked Facebook less so I wouldn’t have to write it down. Instead, I looked at it on my laptop.) Even though I attempted to modify my phone habits, I couldn’t do anything about the amount of time that I spent reading and replying to text messages. That’s a large part of how I keep in touch with friends and family, and I wasn’t entirely willing to give that up just because my hand was tired of writing.
It strikes me now just how odd it was to be doing a technological thing (using the phone) while simultaneously doing a non-technological thing (writing down information in the notebook). For me, it seemed like a crossing of two different parts of my life. I do all writing for school using technology (ie: my laptop), and any kind of personal creative writing tends to be done by hand. It seemed like the left and right sides of my brain were working together, rather than separately. Just that concept alone is incredibly interesting to think about.
I’ve learned a lot about my technology habits from this experiment. Even though it only went on for two days, I still filled up at least part of 6 pages in the book. When we discussed this in class, I actually had the most instances of using my phone. But because most of those instances were reading and replying to text messages, I actually had one of the smaller times spent on the phone. I was previously aware that I am overly attached to my phone, but writing it all down really helped give me actual proof that I am.
Along those lines, I think that I probably would have used my phone more if I owned a smartphone. Because I don’t own one, I don’t have any apps that I could have been using for more instances of social or textual interactivity. I was focused on text messages and the small bit of internet access that my phone lets me have before informing me that the webpage has too much data for it to load correctly (which is an incredibly infuriating thing, in case you were wondering). My phone may have actually limited the instances of social or textual interactivity. I can only imagine what the data would have looked like if I had a smartphone.
Live your life 