Doom-scrolling Online Videos
Despite the decline in my phone screen time, my laptop screen time has increased. One key contributor to the increasing number is watching short videos online. I wanted to track the content of my video watching, the duration of it, and things that happened after it, so I could better understand potential factors that incentivize or discourage the behavior. The tracking started from Thursday 1.11 to Tuesday 1.16. The data was logged at the start of the video watching and the end of it when I switched to another activity. I did not have any specific goal in terms of the number of hours I wanted to cut from watching, but the awareness of measuring added a bit more guilt.
Logs Record
I recorded the watching period per day.
1.11 05:18-06:39 pm (The duration is not long because I was with friends the entire afternoon and the following evening.)
1.12 02:12-03:58 am (I stayed up late as the first event I had on Friday was 1:30 pm. I did not watch during the day while I was surrounded by friends.)
1.13 1:29-06:38 pm, 9:12-11:59 pm (I binge-watched music reaction videos + food exploration videos, and the most urgent due was not until Tuesday.)
1.14 12:00-02:11 am (I stayed up late again as my sleeping schedule has been pushed too late. Lying down was too comfortable to get out of the tendency.)
1.15 10:06 am-01:27 pm (I was procrastinating from preparing for a group meeting.)
1.16 01:19 pm-03:49 pm (Celebration of finishing homework. I was also stressed from making course decisions.)
2 Models from Observation
Connected Circle Model
Each action/state is captured in a bubble. The highlighted bubble is the main action I am observing. The green arrows are linking factors that help decrease the watching time. The red arrows are linking factors that help increase the time spent doom-scrolling. Black arrows are links that do not point to the main factor. The black arrows without arrows mean that the two factors are interdependent.
There are several interesting observations from the circle. First, there is a loop – having high stress leads to stress-eating, and I have a bad habit of watching videos while eating. The longer time I spend watching videos, the higher the stress I create for myself. Another interesting thing is about the number of homework due. The more homework is due, the more likely I am going to be stressed, triggering the negative loop described earlier. When I manage to reduce the number of tasks on hand, my stress level is lowered and I am more likely to lie down, increasing the chance of starting doom-scrolling. It seems like if I want to break this cycle, I need to reshape my behaviors when taking a break. For example, instead of lying down, I could go out for a walk or call a friend.
Iceberg Model
The iceberg model provides a different perspective from the connected circle. To draw the model, I have to think about the meta-relation of the general categories to which the factors I listed in the connected circle belong. For example, I was not aware that stress levels changed my perception of the pleasures that the videos gave me. Realizing that my brain constantly craves distraction helps me understand that I need not cut all distractions all at once.
Experience
This experience is different from the first Measure Me task. The first task was helpful as it served a supervising purpose, but it was too frequent and I started to get annoyed. In the second task, I got to be more flexible about logging. Being able to oversee the logging for a longer time helps me find new directions to reduce doom-scrolling time:
- to find new distractions such as going out for a walk, reading a book, cooking
- to stabilize my stress level and thus to avoid the negative loop
- to pay attention to double-sided sword-like factors such as the number of homework
It would be really fun to do an intervention study to examine the first insight in the future. Next time I would try out different logging methods on different days. Though that is tough to organize the logging data, it might be worthwhile to find out which logging method could end up being a helpful intervention means.
