Term Paper #1: Personal Media Usage

In today's digital age, we are constantly engaged with the media. From doom scrolling through social media, watching the nightly news, or even driving through town listening to news on the radio or a podcast. Although two out of the three things I listed are popular, the main source of media we use is social media on our electronic devices. Without our phones, our routines would change drastically because of how much we rely on them just to do the simplest things. In this post, I want to describe what my daily routine looks like with my media usage, screen time, and how I use my device for schoolwork.

  
 

 My day usually begins with my alarms, as I wake up between 8:00 and 8:30 every day. After I am fully awake, I check all of my social media to see if I missed anything throughout the night. I normally don't respond back to anyone if they contact me while I was asleep, but it just allows me to look at my notifications. As I get dressed, I normally turn on a show on Netflix, so I am not sitting in silence even though I may not even be completely watching it. Once I am dressed, I head to my car to drive to class. Once I am in my car, I turn on Apple CarPlay to Spotify and listen to some country music. Doing this puts me in the right mindset to help me get started for my day.

​Before class begins, I check my socials again, including Snapchat, open up a few snaps and snap people back. Then go on Facebook to check and see if anybody from back home has posted anything interesting. Once class begins, I am either using my iPad or computer for Blackboard content to look at slideshows or assignments my professors have posted but taking notes on pen and paper because I prefer taking notes manually than electronically. After all my classes for the day are done I always text my friends to see if they want to go to the cafe, or study together later. As I am on my way to the cafe, I always call my mom because our lunch times are always the same, just to chat with her for a minute. During lunch, my friends and I talk about things that have been posted on Yikyak, or snapchat. Even though I try not to constantly talk about something I have seen through the media, it is always around us.

After all of my tasks are completed, I find that I have the most media usage because that is when I have my downtime. My time is normally consumed with going down the rabbit hole of TikTok, which isn’t always the best thing, but in my opinion, it is the most entertaining social media app we have in our hands today. If I am not on TikTok during this time, I am on Snapchat, snapping my friends, or on Instagram looking at my friends' posts. In the afternoon to night, I am hanging out with friends, so my phone time varies because my full attention is on them.

​I usually go to bed around 8:30 to 9:00, where I have more screen time. My roommate and I either watch a show or movie together, or we have our nightly doom scroll on TikTok, sending each other videos we think are funny. I normally fall asleep around 9:30 or 10, listening to music with my AirPods in. I try not to stay up late on my phone, because sleep is very important in my routine to help me academically and function as a human. Once I put my phone down, I am ready to start my routine all over the next day.

My screen time for this past week was 9 hours and 42 minutes. Although that amount isn’t the greatest, I feel like the society and media culture we live in today, with most of our lives being digitized, a low screen time is very hard to try and accomplish, but not impossible. It is so easy to get addicted to something that you can hold in your hands, that can give you the world from around the world. Imagining life without media is quite literally impossible; my generation was born with technology in our hands and now doesn’t know how to function without it. Not only as a society without technology, but also media, because most of the time when you open up your phone you are opening some form of media app that is feeding you content.

​Technology and media usage is something we use constantly in our daily routine, from the time we wake up, until staying up late, still consumed with it. Media usage is how we connect with people around us, and around the globe. Media usage has changed the way not only society communicates but functions. The media gives us the world, gives jobs opportunities, gives inspiration, and critical news about the world we live in. Not only does the media provide news, but provides business marketing for companies, industries, and schools. Although there are many conversations on how technology and media has positive and negative effects on our lifestyles, I believe that we should maximize the benefit of what has been placed in our laps because it truly is the world and the touch of one fingertip.