Technology Mindfulness Project

Ever since I was little, technology has always been there, whether it be in the way of cameras, flip phones, video game consoles, or smartphones. I remember using my mom’s flip phone to take pictures of everything I saw. The dawn of the smartphone didn’t come quickly for my family and I had a slide up cell-phone until I was in the 8th grade. That may seem young to many, but by that time, I was already way behind everyone I knew and was desperate to catch up so I could text people off of a touchscreen too.

When I was given my first iPhone, I felt like the world had opened up for me. I felt so much cooler and up-to-date, but I didn’t realize the consequences that could possibly come with my new device. Smartphones have begun taking over and are becoming more advanced by the minute, with more abilities and ways to consume our time. My smartphone has become a staple in my own life, and without it, I don’t know how I’d reach the rest of the world and be on time for anything. I have put so much emphasis on a device that its almost like I have forgotten how to live without it.

Throughout this blog, you will be following me on a journey or smartphone discovery; I will be recording the amount of time I spend on my phone plus the number of times I unlock it to inevitably consume my time. While I am recording this data, I will be answering the following prompts:

Each prompt has been posted on a weekly basis and the data collected and answers received are from the past two months. Hopefully, you get as much out of this project that I did and see the impacts of a smartphone in a busy college student’s life.

My smartphone is a huge part of my everyday life. I talk to my friends, use it to get around, and constantly take photos of everything going on around me. just like most millennials, my smartphone is a hub for almost all of my activities. After I finished the smartphone compulsion test, it told me I had received a 14 out of 15 and that I needed to see a therapist for my behaviors. While taking the test, I noticed that many of the questions are targeted at the behaviors that my friends and I often participate in. Moving away from people just my age, I noticed that even my parents could take part in these activities mentioned in the quiz, and they are hardly tech savvy. The test seems to target anyone with a smartphone, addicted or not.

The test in no way proves that I am addicted to my smartphone, regardless of my score. It essentially said that even if you only align with one of the issues mentioned, that you need to cut down your usage. I would say that I do need to stop using my phone as much, but wouldn’t dramatize my usage to the point where I would need to reach out for help. Overall, I think the test is targeting anyone who owns a smartphone and is trying to get them to feel bad about themselves in order to support the services who originally made the test.

My smartphone profile tends to be a hub for social media. Most of my free time is spent switching between apps and deciding which irrelevant notification to look at next. Sometimes, I find that my phone usage consumes my time and distracts me from truly working on projects or doing activities that deserve my time. I often use it to decompress after a long day, but that usually ends in me sitting on my phone endlessly. The apps that think that I use the most are Instagram, Snapchat and VSCO. I am obsessed with taking and posting pictures, so I am not surprised that I often find myself scrolling through different filters and deciding which one would make the photo look the best.

I think that my smartphone usage reflects how often I spend time on social media apps, which consequently, takes up a large amount of my time. I would estimate that I spend about two and a half hours on my phone each day. This sounds like a lot, but sometimes I feel like I’m on it for even longer. The reason I am on my phone for this long isn’t that I watch lots of videos on it or because I am actively doing work, but it is purely because of social media. It seems to consume a lot of the time in my day and takes me away from what I should be doing instead. The time spent on social media isn’t spent networking either. It’s just spent sending irrelevant Snapchats to friends and mindlessly scrolling through Instagram.

While I think my time spent on my phone is excessive, I know I tend to check it way too often. I would say I check my phone, on average, about 85 times a day. I often catch myself looking at the time or just picking up my phone for no reason, and ultimately sidetrack myself from what I am doing. I used to wear a watch every single day until a few months ago when it ran out of battery. I have since neglected to replace the battery and have seen a change in how often I rely on technology. Since I stopped wearing my watch, I’ve noticed that I take my phone more places and will continuously check the time on it. I am not sure if I have always checked the time this much, but it is definitely more noticeable as I now have to take my phone out of my pocket, bookbag or purse, instead of just lifting up my wrist.

My favorite apps are definitely social media apps and photo apps. I use social media often, even if I don’t post on it every day. I am super aware of my image and what I am posting for everyone to see, so because of this, I also have a number of photo editing apps on my phone. Like I previously mentioned, I spend an abundance of time on social media and use it mostly when I am bored or avoiding my responsibilities. My mindless usage of apps like Instagram has me obsessed with editing pictures and making sure my profile is immaculate. I’m not too happy about my obsession with it, but I don’t know how to stop it. I notice that I spend a lot of time making sure each photo is edited correctly before I post it, which can take up to an hour. I wish I knew how to fix this issue and not care, but it doesn’t look like that will be changing any time soon. Overall, I’d say my top/favorite apps to use are Snapchat, Instagram, VSCO, and the phone app. I know, the phone app came out of nowhere, but I do like to use it often. It’s my favorite way to talk to people, especially my parents since I feel like they are not the most efficient texters (and neither am I). I have organized my apps close to their order of importance without realizing it underneath all of the basic, pre-installed iPhone apps.

Since I have begun blogging, I have been recording my data on an app called Moment. Moment has recorded the number of times I unlock my phone, the amount of time I spend on it, and apps I have used the most until my phone inevitably updated. The first day I started recording my data, the app said I spent 150 minutes (2.5 hours) on my phone and picked it up 22 times. From this data alone, it seems I have directly hit what I have believed my recorded to be for the amount of time spent on my phone. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t record the number of times I have just glanced at my phone, because I am sure that number would be much higher than 22.

Moving forward, the numbers seem to get higher than my first day. The numbers seem to then average around the mid 200s to a little bit over 300 minutes a day and almost doubling the number of pickups I had before averaging at about 50 to 60 a day. It’s clear that the first day recording my data must’ve been a really good day for me and now I know that it really isn’t a representation of my true smartphone usage.

I thought I would be shocked that my smartphone usage is much higher than I thought, but I’m not. Most of the time I am on my phone, time gets away from me and I am easily distracted by everyone else’s lives. Time passes fast when I am staring at my screen and it’s clear that I am unaware of it. While it’s easy to tell how fast time passes after I remove myself from my screen, I clearly am unable to estimate my time spent. I want to be someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time on my phone, but I’m just not. While it is something that I need to work on, it makes sense. For my future career, I have thought about managing the social media for a large company or corporation, so my media usage makes sense. I clearly enjoy being online, to a degree, so my extensive hours and pickups make it clearer as to why I think this career could be an option for me. Though It isn’t an excuse and I do need to cut down for the benefit of my health and self-esteem. I want this for myself pretty badly, but I just don’t see it happening.

As I have explained before, my smartphone usage is excessive. I have tried before to detox and stop using altogether, but that just doesn’t work for my lifestyle and the technological world around us. I found the article “How Digital Addiction Is Ruining Our Health and a 12-Step Plan to Take Back Control” given to us by Dr. Reid interesting. It offered me choices I hadn’t really thought of before. There are a few strategies in this article that I found very helpful and definitely plan on taking more advantage of them.

In the article, the first step is to set an “email cutoff time”. Now, I don’t check my emails excessively, but I do check my texts and social media apps often. I decided to take this tips advice and am going to start implementing a time in which I no longer check these apps and respond to my messages. I feel like late at night I am guilty of dragging out my phone usage and talking to people when I probably should be sleeping and preparing for the next day ahead of me.

While checking the list, I also saw step number 8. This step requires on to turn off all of their notifications and “check them at your own leisure”. I decided to take full advantage of this step but tweaked it in a few ways. I turned off my notifications for all apps and set my phone on do not disturb. Since I have my parents favorited in my phone, this gives them the ability to reach me and bypass my do not disturb mode setting. I know that this is cheating the rule, but my parents need to be able to contact me in case of an emergency and considering the state that one of my family members is in, I do not want to miss their calls. Other than them, I cannot receive any notifications and can check them whenever I feel like it is necessary. This change in vibrations in my back pocket and dings I hear from my phone felt like a relief. Considering the amount of time I spend on my phone, it was nice to not be bothered by minuscule things like an Instagram like or a Snapchat that has no relevance.

I chose these two strategies because I felt like they were the easiest to implement into my own like. Yes, I tweaked them, but I still felt their impact. I also chose these strategies because they weren’t an entire detox. Like I had mentioned, I have tried something like that before, and it didn’t work in the slightest. These strategies were like baby steps to the real thing. Even though they were small, they were a great relief to me, and I found myself freer, more awake, and more productive. They have overall impacted me in a positive way already, and its only been a day!

After leaving my phone at home this morning, I can say it was not easy. To leave my phone at home, I had to plan ahead a lot and really cement my plans. When I left for class in the morning, it was easy. I talked to my friend on the shuttle and didn’t even think about checking it. When I got to my class, I arrived early and felt bored and awkward since I had arrived there early and had nothing to do. I decided to just draw in my planner, but the time did not pass fast.

After I went to class, I had my lunch break and luckily, I already knew my friend would be at CINO waiting for me just like every other day. That went smoothly and had no issues. There weren’t really any issues for the rest of the day but boredom and some anxiety. I was nervous that someone would be trying to reach out to me and I would miss it plus I no longer had anything to look at instead of focus on my surroundings. After the three classes I had after lunch, I was so ready to get back to my room to see if anyone had contacted me. Unfortunately, no one had and all that anxiety was for nothing, but I did learn something from it. I focused on what my friends were saying to be better and lived in the moment. I don’t need my phone on me every day and it really isn’t a necessity. My parents were just fine in the 70s when they didn’t have a cell phone, so why am I struggling now. It has to do with the world’s reliance on technology, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be able to have a technology free day and live my life, but hopefully next time (if there ever is one) I won’t be stressing about missed texts so much and will focus even more on the people around me.

For over a year, I have been partaking in mindfulness exercises to deal with stress and anxiety, so I found it interesting to partake in one for my phone. While I am used to taking my mind off of my phone and separating myself from it entirely, it was interesting that the exercise was centered around me holding it in my hand. That alone made it much harder for me to concentrate. The first step was easy. All I had to do was sit upright and comfortably, a task that most mindfulness exercises ask you to do. What was different was my eyes being open. That's when everything got harder.

During the meditation, it was extremely difficult to keep myself from opening the Snapchat app and my email app. It was the first time I had truly noticed I have the constant urge to open these apps even though there is clearly no notifications from them. It took a lot in me not to click on them and to get back to constant and mindful breathing. While looking at my phone, I never felt pure frustration, but instead, I felt stress. I didn’t even realize that my phone could be a source of some of my stress until now.

The restless feeling that the exercise asked about was definitely related to my urge to click on my Snaochat and email apps. Also, while I was meditating, I received a notification from Twitter. While I could see what the notification entailed, I still had the restless urge to click on it and open the app. I zeroed in on this feeling, which was strange. I already knew what the notification was saying, so why did I feel the urge to click on it. After I finished this section of the meditation and realigned my breathing, I thought about the last two parts of the meditation exercise.

While meditating, I explored my phone and the problems it causes me. It exhausts me to keep up with my social media apps and makes me feel inadequate. Having access to tons of information all of the time definitely hasn’t been good for my self-esteem. I haven’t been in control of my smartphone urges and have let them run rampant. Trying to have the best image of myself on social media is exhausting, and after this exercise, it has made me realize how tired my phone really makes me. I was ready to put it down and focus on something else not as electronic, but this blog post comes first. Then I can nap and take my mind off my screen. In the future, I will try to use the memory of this exercise to keep me from scrolling through Instagram and finding myself in a mess of emotions. My phone really does make me tired, and that exhaustion can’t just be fixed with a few naps.

After finishing each blog and really assessing the data at hand, I realize that I definitely need to lay off of my phone. While my apps say that my usage is normal, it doesn’t feel that way, especially recently. Over the Thanksgiving break, I had to upgrade my phone due to my old one having issues. Since I have updated, I have been more aware of myself using my phone more often, getting tired of looking at its screen, and just reaching for it more. The meditating exercise definitely brought my attention to this issue and helped me realize that maybe I’m just not tired because of a lack of sleep or stress from my schoolwork, but it could be from my phone and the stress that it brings me by looking at what it has to offer me.

This project as a whole has really brought attention to how often I use my phone and what I really put my attention towards when I decide to pick it up. The apps Moment and Space, over the course of the past few weeks, have been recording how long I stay on my phone and calling it “screen time” or just “time” and the number of times I unlock it and calling that “pickups” or “unlocks”. Moment has been recording my data since I have started this project and Space was downloaded and activated when I received my new phone; this difference in downloading times is extremely interesting and shows how active I have been on my phone in just the past two weeks using Space’s data.

First, is screenshots of Moment’s data. This data is over the course of the entire duration of the project.

After reviewing this data, the app essentially concluded that my screentime is below that of an average user, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. The times I am most active on my phone are accurate as well, as it seems that I am most active around the times that I get out of class. I did find it strange that there is a drop in screentime in late November, but that is most likely due to getting a new phone and not having all of my information and apps transferred over yet. Overall, the screentime data isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t make me feel great.

Out of all of the information that has been collected from my phone, I definitely think this is the most interesting. My pickups are slightly above the average and it says my “best day” has 0 pickups, but that definitely can be attributed to a lack of having the app when getting my new phone. While all of that is semi-interesting, the most interesting data is the spike in pickups after the drop in late November when I got my new phone. My pickups didn’t skyrocket, but they definitely rose and it is clear that getting a new phone has made me want to pick it up more. Getting a new phone clearly isn’t always for the better.

Next, the screenshots of the data collected from Space will show how much data I’ve collected from my new phone in the past two weeks.

These two screenshots over the past two weeks display the number of minutes I’ve spent on my phone each day since it has been replaced. When I look at it like this, I am shocked to see that there was a day where I spent almost 7 hours on my phone. After the first week of getting a new phone, I went back to the store to trade it out for another, smaller model. I was super careful with it that first week, which is why the screen time is much less than the second week. It is clear to me that I became more comfortable with the smaller model of phone the second week and began using it more, to the point of excess, and exceeding my daily average four out of the seven days of the week.

Just like the time spent on my phone, the same problem applies to this set of data. Getting a new phone essentially boosted my amount of phone unlocks, and even more so when I traded my new phone for a similar model that I was more comfortable with. I am, however, shocked that my unlocks over the past few days are so low. I am guessing that it is due to studying for exams and the overall stress that comes with it.

Overall, my data and the experience I have had answering these blog posts has made me want to cut down on my usage and really think about why I am sitting on my phone so much. The technological age that we are in gives us no choice but to have one and use it, but it is up to each person to decide how their smartphone is going to impact their lives. After digging deeper, it is clear to me that my smartphone hasn’t had the greatest impact on my life and I am going to use that knowledge to attempt to cut down on my usage and focus on things that are better for my health and mental wellness. While I am overwhelmed by my data and am hoping to make it change someday, it is nice to know that I am not alone in my amount of usage and there are others out there just like me. Moving forward, I am going to try to stop caring so much about my notifications, social media image, and focus more on what really matters, the real, authentic me.

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