Writeup: Measuring Me Take 2

Behavior

The behavior that I would like to change is scrolling on social media on my phone. I have made many attempts in the past to reduce this behavior and found it challenging. Using screen time limits, moving the app location, or completely hiding the app from my homescreen work for a short period of time until I simply create the new habit of extending my limit or searching for the app. I have been successful for many months when I completely removed the app from my phone. However, recently I have published my own word game app, and because I want to use social media to promote it, I need to have the apps on my phone. For this reason, I am trying to learn how I can successfully limit or stop my scrolling without removing the app completely.

Methods

I decided to measure myself for three days, checking in with myself each hour to ask what I was doing at that moment, whether I had opened social media in the last hour, and if so, which ones. My hope for this was that I could start to correlate what other activities in my life correlate with me opening social media more or less. I chose one hour intervals because I felt that I needed long enough intervals that I wasn’t disrupting my normal behavior due to logging yet short enough intervals that I could remember how I spent that time. I felt one hour was a good balance here.

Measurement

My measurements were as follows:

Friday, January 9, 2026

Saturday, January 10, 2026

Sunday, January 11, 2026

Experience

Logging this was an almost scary experience for me because I very quickly noticed that any moment of downtime or boredom was almost immediately met with going on social media, before I even thought about it. During the time I had deleted social media for a few months, I had started to fill my downtime with things that I enjoyed much more, like crafting or working out. Yet, after only a month of having them back, this study showed me all that “change” was completely gone. In addition to boredom, I also noticed that every time I posted for my app, I would feel the urge to constantly check and see if I’d gotten views. Once I was there, I’d almost always begin doomscrolling. This experience made me really start to think whether trying to advertise my app is even worth the toll it is taking on my daily life.

Models

Iceberg Model

  Connection Circle

Changes

I think if I were to do this experiment again, I would try to keep logs of exactly what made me open social media each time that I do. I think it would be interesting to keep tabs on how much I consciously choose to go on social media and why versus how much I open the apps without thinking at all, and how long I stay on the app in both circumstances. Also, it would be nice to repeat this experiment at a time when I wasn’t sick and mostly stuck in bed because I’m not sure my social media use is as accurate to my general daily life.