My Relationship With Technology
Because of both my major and my hobbies, I spend more time than I would like to admit staring at a screen. As a game design major, I do almost all of my work at a computer. The logical thing to do when I have free time would be to stay as far away from screens as possible. However, my passion for playing games is what drove me to choose my major. So, I naturally spend at least some of my time playing games.
This would be a fine way to spend my time, if I didn't also spend upwards of four hours every day on my phone, scrolling through various social media platforms.
My Phone Usage
The way that I feel is best to discuss my relationship with technology is by analyzing my phone usage from the past week (the week of April 21st). I find this chart to be very revealing, as it tallies up the total time I've spent on my phone each day, breaks it down by app, and averages it.
On Sunday and Monday, I have no excuses. My top three apps for both days were Chrome, YouTube, and Instagram. On those days, I spent far too much time watching videos, scrolling my feed, and shopping online.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I started focusing on finals work, so even though my phone usage went down, I spent roughly the same amount of time using a screen.
Thursday is an interesting case, as that was the day that I went to the beach with a group of my friends. The only time I used my phone (outside of incidental checks) was during the car rides there and back to pass the time with a mobile game.
From Friday into Sunday, the usage data is skewed. The green bars on each of those days were me using an application that helped me track points in a card game.
While this may have been a nonstandard week for my screen time, I feel it gives a better idea of habits and the various ways that I choose to use my phone. I do feel a bit disappointed in myself when I look at this usage data though, as a full sixth of my day is routinely spent looking at my phone.
Breaking the Habits
For about a month now, I have been using break reminders and time limits on my two most used apps (those being YouTube and Instagram). Before I set up these reminders, I had a real addiction to the two apps' TikTok-style, short-form content features. While the reminders haven't exactly solved the problem, they have helped me realize and begin to fix my issue.
This video helped me realize the effect extensive social media (and general screen) usage had on me, my mood, and my productivity.
Technology's Impact on Me
Technology is a necessity in this day and age. And while its pros are incredible, it is not without its dreadful cons. I have the ability to stay connected with the entire world through my phone and computer, but I can also fall into feedback loops scrolling through social media for hours on end. Virtual assistants like the Google Home and Amazon Echo fulfill a variety of needs with only the sound of a voice (i.e. playing music, setting alarms, and searching the internet), but are also listening to us constantly for their wake word. I personally take this in stride, as I can really only hope to build my own better habits to use technology to my advantage, and not the other way around.
