Time Diary

Over the last four days I have been using my phones "screen time" tracking ability to document my usage of social media. I will be discussing my social media usage from February 18th, 2023 to February 21st, 2023. 

February 18th, 2023 - On this day my social media use began at around 8:00 am when I first woke up. In the morning I used social media to kill some time before I had to get out of bed and ready for work. That was about 35 minutes worth of time spent on apps like Twitter, Instagram, and Tik Tok. My social media usage then went quiet from 10:00 am till 3:30 pm, that is when I began my lunch break. I spent about 15 minutes browsing twitter during my lunch break and did not use it till I had gotten off work at 7:00 pm. That is when I spent another hour and half browsing social media before I hopped in bed and turned on a movie.

February 19th, 2023 - I slept in on this day so my social media use did not begin until 9:30 am. I spent about an hour and a half browsing social media before I got out of bed and ready for work at 12:00 pm. From 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm I did not use social media since I was busy at work. After I got off I spent about an hour and half completing some homework before diving into the social media verse. From 8:30 pm till about midnight I spent my time using Twitter, instagram, and Tik Tok. 

February 20th, 2023 - I did not have to be up at any specific time today so my social media usage did not start until around 11:00 am. From 11:00 am till around 3:00 pm I had used social media for about 45 minutes. After 3:00 pm I did not use social media again until around 9:00 pm due to running errands and completing class assignments. I stopped using social media around 10:30 pm when I got into bed.

February 21st, 2023 - This day is what I considered to be a cleaning day. For much of the day I spent cleaning my apartment and grocery shopping. My social media usage didn't begin in the morning like it normally does. This day I only spent about an hour altogether on social media. I was busy doing tasks and never sat down and wasted time like I normally do. This type of day is rare for me and only happens twice a month when I need to deep clean my apartment. 

    Now that we know what my social media usage looks like over the past four days we can now break it down. When using social media I tend to use my iPhone like most people. Having all of that power in the palm of your hand makes it hard not to use social media. Being connected with people all around the world makes it easy to get sucked into the social media abyss. I tend to use social media in a daily routine. Most of my usage comes in the morning time and night time. I often use social media to keep up with the latest trends as well as investing advice. Twitter has a large community of investors on the platform that give tips and tricks with investing. During the day, social media tends to lack the same content that it does at night because people tend to have more important things to do. I sometimes like to interact with people on the main feed but normally if I communicate with anyone it is through direct message. 

    If I have something important to do then I tend to stay away from social media because it causes me to procrastinate. Whenever i'm focusing on a task I like to eliminate distractions. I feel like social media use can definitely affect my ability to complete tasks. My phone tends to be a major distraction so I often turn it off until I am finished with what I need to do. I believe that if I didn't have as much self control as I do, I would suffer like many others who can't separate themselves from their phones. I feel like social media use can definitely affect my ability to complete tasks. The time of the semester definitely affects my social media use as well. During the last couple weeks of the semester my social media use is little to none because of finals. I try not to have my phone around during finals week to prevent the distractions it may cause.