From Friday morning (1/10) to Sunday night (1/12) I logged my behavior every 30 minutes in my notes app, noting instances of mindless social media opening, and what I was doing immediately before and after using social media. I opted for my notes app over another, more comprehensive logging app due to the fact that I could log and view my logs on both my Mac and my iPhone.
I decided to log this behavior because I simultaneously have a fear of wasting time, and waste a lot of time doing things that do not bring me all that much joy, i.e.: using social media when I could be doing my hobbies. At this point in my life, though, when I have had social media for so many years, it’s become habit to open it on my phone, so to give me some more mindfulness about my usage, I decided to track it for this assignment.
After 3 full days of behavior logging, I learned that I feel most compelled to open a social media app when I am alone with nothing else to do. There are many times during the day that I do not open social media, and those moments are spent with friends or spent doing a pleasurable hobby of mine. For instance, I never opened social media while getting brunch and running errands with Athena–but I did feel compelled to open it when Athena left momentarily to get us coffee from the dining hall. Why? I think that I just generally feel uncomfortable being alone with my thoughts, even for only a few minutes. I pride myself on enjoying alone time, but I learned through this exercise that there’s a difference for me between alone time spent crocheting, reading, exercising, and alone time spent on my phone. If I am alone and don’t feel like reading or crocheting or something else, I resort to my phone because that’s better than thinking. So, my next steps for achieving behavior change will likely be to address my discomfort being bored and alone, and discovering new ways to distract myself from lingering discomfort.
Something I noticed while logging my behavior in both part 1 and part 2 is that I make different choices when I know I have to record them. So, the days I logged were perhaps not the most accurate reflections of my behaviors due to my hyperawareness. If I were to do this again, I’d maybe look into evaluating my social media activity, over many days, rather than logging it myself for a few. That way, I was able to forget I’m being ‘watched,’ and get more accurate data. I would also have done this further along in the quarter, because I feel particularly motivated (ah, week 1 excitement, it won’t last) to be productive and not waste time. I might be less enthusiastic about homework in week 6, and therefore more likely to open social media.
