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Technology Mindfulness Portfolio

My Project

When I had gotten my first phone I was entering middle school, which for me was sixth grade. The main purpose as to why I had the phone was to call my parents or another adult in my life in case of an emergency. However as I got older and learned more about the technology I had at my fingertips I started to use more apps. At first it was apps for music and games that I could play offline or on wifi when I was at home. Since I was in middle school my parents wouldn't play for more than the basic package of data, so my ability to go on the internet outside of my house was very limited. As time went on I would use more phone more and more for apps that I could use at home, such as games, social media, and streaming platforms. The main app that I had used at this time was YouTube, and to this day YouTube is still one of my most used apps. Now that I am older I wouldn’t say that I’m addicted to YouTube or any other the other apps, but I do hop on them whenever I get anxious or need feel the need to distract myself. So they are a scape goat for me.

This project will be used to collect data on how much I use apps on my phone. Before this project I will can 99.99% guarantee that my most used app for the semester will be Youtube. Doing the project will test my theory that YouTube is my most used app and will prove if I use my phone too much.

Entry #1

For my first entry, I took a Smartphone Compulsion Test; I found the test interesting because the whole test was “yes” or “no” questions. I find it pretty hard that a test where I answer a some questions with “yes” and others with “no” that it can determine if I am addicted to my phone.

I think being put into the category of I may have a problematic or compulsive smartphone use pattern makes some sense, but is not completely correct. I think it would be interesting to see how my family members score since I always see them on their phone while watching tv, at the pool, and sitting somewhere.

Entry #2

I would say that my main use of my smartphone is to make calls and text, however that is not the truth at all. I am connected with all my friends and family on multiple types of social media and messaging apps. The main app I use to communicate with friends is Snapchat and the main app I use to communicate with my family is the default messaging app given to me by the phone.

My main use that I get from my phone is for entertainment. The main type of entertainment that I get is from watching shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, and a few other streaming apps. I also get entertainment from watching different types of videos on the app YouTube.

I think that my average time spent on my phone per day is somewhere around the 7 and a half hours and the 8 hour mark, however if it is the weekend I will either have added 2–3 more hours on that time or take 2–3 hours away from that time depending on what I have going on during the weekends.

Entry #3

My first favorite app that I think that I use the most in my life is YouTube. The main reason as to why I like YouTube a lot is because of the ability to watch almost close to anything and any video you want to in the world. Another reason as to why I like YouTube a lot is because I can watch things that I find interesting and have a different type of way it is illustrated and articulated based on who makes the video and who I watch. The main video category that I watch is called Podcasts. There are many different ways creators can go about with making Podcasts and creating material for their Podcasts, however it is almost always the same with a few people sitting around and talking about an issue or a topic for an hour or more. Another video category that I watch is called Gaming. This category is a vey broad one since it covers basically every type of video made on video games.

My second favorite app that I use a lot but not as much as my first is TikTok. The reason I enjoy watching TikTok and scrolling on it for hours is because basically the same reasons as YouTube. The main difference between YouTube and TikTok is that TikTok is limited on how long a video can be and as of right now the max length a video can be made and posted is 3 minutes, but TikTok and YouTube have the same ideas as in the creativity outlet and how the only limit on what you can find to watch is your own imagination. But just like YouTube the main thing I watch on TikTok is video segments of podcasts. Not only do I watch podcasts, but I also watch vlogs.

My third favorite app that I use quite a bit is Snapchat. Snapchat is very different from what my first two favorite apps are like. Snapchat is the app that I think of whenever social media is brought up or said anywhere. As can be deduced Snapchat is a Social media app that can only be used with your friends. All you do on Snapchat is send pictures, videos, and chats to your friends, and there can be one-on-one chats made with a friend or a group-chat made with multiple friends. You can also follow social media influencers and follow what they do when they post on their story, a story is basically a post you can make on your profile that can be seen by all your friends or people that have added you and will expire after 24 hours.

Entry #4

At this point in my project I have to show my data so far along, which is basically a week of data. I am going to use the screen time feature in the settings app to keep track of my data for this progress. Here is my data I have from the week of Jun 4–11:

As you can see my screen time usage was pretty similar at around 8 hours when it came to Sun-Tue, however once Wed-Fri came along my phone usage had dipped down to a little over 6 hours. Then on the last day of Sat the screen time had shot up to well over 9 hours of screen time. One thing I would like to point out is how many hours I have on social apps, and that is mainly TikTok giving me that 44 hours of social time. I see TikTok as an entertainment app since I primarily use it for entertainment to watch the videos and not as a social media platform to connect with friends.

Pictured below is a list of the apps I’ve used from the feature “Screen Time”:

Like I said before my main usage of screen time is from TikTok. The one that might be shocking is Twitter, since I have never mentioned it in any of the previous blogs. However, I have started using Twitter a lot more in the past week than I have ever in the past and I think that is because I find it more enjoyable to use now that Elon Musk owns it. Seeing the data has really helped me understand my habits and how I can possibly control them in the future.

Entry #5

After seeing my screen time and phone usage in the last Entry I can conclude that I might have a slight smartphone addiction. I don’t think that it warrants a visit or the need to get a physician to consult with and get checked out, but I do think that I can manage it with creating good habits and breaking that bad habits that I have created with ridiculous amounts of screen time and phone usage.

So this idea to change my nightly ritual seemed like it was very far fetched and I didn’t understand why I should do this. Then I changed a few things in my routine that involves my phone and I saw a pretty big change in my phone usage. I think that this idea work really good if the person practices it the right way and doesn’t cheat themselves when it comes to using their phone at night.

This was a very recommended way to limit phone usage and it seems like common sense that it would work. After turning off my notifications I found myself relieved for a few hours and then after that feeling wore off I got hit with a heavy wave of wanting to check my phone even though I wasn’t getting active notifications. I then realized that after a bit that I was able to sense when I needed to check my phone to see some certain things like messages from my family or chats from my friends. So in theory it should work and for the most part it worked for me and it caused me to check my phone less.

This one I found while messing around with my phone with the screen time app and I found the feature to limit the amount of time I can spend on a certain app or multiple apps. This helped me because as soon as I hit the limit that is set on the app it locked me out of the app and didn’t let me use that app anymore. However, the only downside to it is that I can easily get past the locked screen just by one tap of a button, so I doesn’t completely stop me from using those apps.

Entry #6

This entry involves leaving my phone in my room for the day when I go out, so I am left without my phone and I need to write about how I felt while being out without my phone.

For this experiment I went to the pool that is in my neighborhood for the better part of the day as well as the beach that is near me so that I can take in a lot of the nature and its beauty that is around me as much as possible during this experiment, so I can have an impactful experience with this and possibly use it later on in my life if I ever need a break from the internet.

When I woke up instead of checking my phone right away I decided to get up and go to my bathroom and drink my morning glass of water and then brush my teeth. Then I decided to get ready for the pool so I put my swim-trunks on and got my towel and went out to the pool. I had laid out there for a few hours, however I didn’t know that because I didn’t have my phone on me, so I just had to guesstimate how much I had been out there and decided to go I around the time of the sun being a little past high noon. But while I was at the pool I felt very refreshed, and it wasn’t because of the water, but because of me not having my phone and having the urge to check my phone all the time. So far I am doing pretty good with this experiment, but I didn’t go that far from my house so it wasn’t that bad.

Now is the real test when I go the the beach without my phone, however this time I am bringing my family with me so that I am able to keep track of time while I am out and, so that I don’t get lost. Being at the beach without my phone was a lot more refreshing than going to the pool without my phone. I was able to take in the the scenery through my eyes and not through a camera lens and it felt very nice and grounding.

All in all I feel like going without my phone for the day felt pretty good, however I think it was that good because I was always doing something and not just sitting around at my house doing nothing and wanting to fill that need of my phone.

Entry #7

For this entry I need to try meditation and write down my experience that I had while meditating.

I don’t know If I did the meditating right or wrong, but I didn’t feel anything when I did it. All I had felt was the cool breeze on my back from the fan in my room. So I mean it was relaxing to sit on the floor with the fan blowing on me but I had almost fell asleep since I had my eyes closed. I think I would had felt more refreshed if I just took a nap instead of trying to meditate.

Entry #8

As I reach the end of the project, I have gotten lots of data from the three weeks, the three weeks started on Jun. 5th that lasted til Jun 25th, this project has been going on for. First is the bar graph of my screen time for the three weeks separated by week:

As you can see from the week of Jun. 4th-11th I had averaged 9 and a half hours of screen time on my phone and almost all of that time was used on social media apps. However during the week of Jun. 11th-18th I had dropped my average screen time from 9 and a half hours to a few minutes under 7 hours. This makes sense because I was practicing different types of ways to reduce my screen time this week for the project and I would say that it worked for the most part. For the last week which lasted from Jun. 18th-25th I had lost all of my habits apparently since I went back up to averaging 9 hours of screen time for the week. It might not be as much as it was the first week, but I still feel like it is a bad habit to have that I am spending close the half of the time I am awake on my phone.

As you can see on the bottom that my most used type of app is social app, so that crushes what my prediction that I had at the beginning of this project that YouTube would be my most used app. I know it wasn’t since YouTube is considered an “Entertainment” app and for 2/3 weeks it came in second on the categories and for the one week it wasn’t the second it was in the third spot. I think that might be expected tho since I spent a lot of time going out and about most of the days so I wasn’t able to watch YouTube and had to spend most of my time on social apps like TikTok and Snapchat.

Along with my weekly screen time I also have the stats for how many notifications I got and how many times I have opened my phone:

One thing I find interesting with this data is that I have more notifications on average throughout the week than I do with with the amount of pickups I averaged. I think that is a very good thing to have with how notifications can cause me to get on my phone right away, so if I get a notification more than I pick up my phone I count that as a win.

With the conclusion of this project I have became a lot more aware of how much I use my phone and how much I spend on certain apps. I knew that it was bad at times depending on what was going on in my life and what I was doing to cope with those things, and sometimes the main way I would cope with certain things would be to distract my mind while on I was on my phone. While seeing this data I think that I can say I need to find new and better ways to distract my mind some times so I am not lost in the world of social media and the internet. I think that I need to revert back to doing what I did during the second week of the project with changing my nightly routine and staying away from my phone for longer periods of time. This project was fun to make and really opened my eyes with my habits I have with my phone and how I can control those habits.

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