Technology Mindfulness Project
About
My name is Dago Aguilera. I bought my first smartphone in 2015 and I’ve had one ever since. It’s been very useful, improved productivity, and saved me on numerous occasions. After years of consistent use I’ve made out more negatives than positives associated with my device.
This project is going to monitor my smartphone usage and habits. I’m doing this not only for a class but to reflect. I have been working on cutting back on my phone usage since I started college and I think this is a perfect time to reflect and see how much progress I have made on the goals I set for myself.
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Entry #1
I took this test as honestly as I could. I think it accurately describes my smartphone habits but I don’t necessarily agree with the scoring recommendations. The question selection was really solid. I think that even though I scored a 9/15 on my test, my phone usage isn’t so severe that I need to see a psychiatrist or psychologist. I would consider myself dependent of my phone. I use it for googling, news, directions, the weather, among many other things. In that same breath I don’t find myself “wasting” a lot of time on my smartphone. Over the last couple years I have cut back significantly on compulsive behaviors.
Entry #2
Smartphone Profile
I try to start my days off with limited smartphone use, that is until after lunch. I do end up using my phone in the mornings regardless with what I would say the primary use of my phone is, music. I find myself on the Apple Music for most of the day, during my morning routine, cooking and meals, commutes, walks to class, at the gym, and anytime i’m at home really.
I do also use it for social media and communicating. I have since condensed my social media profile to one single one, Snapchat. It is the only social media app I have on my phone and because of that I would say I probably spend around 2–3 hours on it daily.
I would say I spend around 5–6 hours on my phone with the music, snapping, and any other use I would find for any particular day. I would estimate my pickups in the ballpark of at least 100–150 times and even more on weekends.
Entry #3
My favorite app on my iPhone is Apple Music. I use this app for the entirety of the day. I really enjoying discovering new sounds to match what I’m doing throughout the day. I have different music for all my day to day activities like the gym, doing homework, or just relaxing. There’s also a social aspect to it where you can follow friends and see what they’re listening to. I like to use this as another way of finding new music.
I enjoying using Snapchat as well. It’s the only app categorized as social media on my device. I use Snapchat to communicate with my friends individually and in group chats. I decided to keep this app because I like the concept and it has a fun factor to it, at least for me, compared to Instagram, Facebook, etc. It’s pretty easy for me to lose a lot of time on this app depending on how many people I am Snapchatting. I also like the Snapchat camera, it makes for good pictures and videos.
I can’t make a favorite apps post without YouTube. I could spend a whole day on YouTube but that’s something I would do I my laptop not on my device. YouTube on my phone serves the purpose of quick entertainment for me when I’m bored. I like to watch quick 5–7 minute videos throughout the day whenever I get down time. There is a couple of podcasts I enjoy too. I mainly play these in the background though as you don’t necessarily have to watch them as much as listen to what is being said. These are a little longer around 1–3 hours.
Entry #4
Usage
At the time of writing this post it is the middle of the week so I will show a full weeks report from the previous week that reflects my phone usage very well for the past year
At the end of the week, Sunday, Screen Time on my iPhone reports my weekly average which has been a steady 5–6 hours for the entirety of the year. This doesn’t really surprise me because I have been home and I find myself on my phone more now that I don’t socialize as much as I did when I lived in Conway. I am averaging around 200 pickups a day which again doesn’t surprise me because that was what I thought it would be. I am it satisfied with these numbers, I’d like them to be a bit lower. But I think that is something that will come as circumstances change.
Entry #5
It’s virtually impossible to not use your phone in this day and age but excessive use can be mitigated. I’ve had success with reducing my phone usage in the past but there is still plenty to be done I feel. I’ve reflected on my day to day usage of my phone and came up with ways to cut my phone usage even more.
1. Stop checking your phone first thing in morning.
I, as most people I know, check my phone first thing in the morning. This is a really bad habit as sometimes I find myself spending 15 to 20 minutes on my device. It usually stems from getting caught up on a in a conversation or a Youtube video notification.
2. Stop using your phone before bed.
This is where I find myself using my phone for the longest amount of consecutive time, before bed. I will spend 1 to 2 HOURS just mindlessly watching videos or talking to friends. This is time that I can use for more productive tasks. I’ve also read that viewing a screen before bed makes it difficult to fall asleep.
3. Don’t pick your phone up as much during your free time.
I’m not saying don’t use your phone when you have down time, just not as much. For me personally, this would really cut my time back because I tend to use my phone out of boredom and that leads to laziness. If I utilized my free time to do something I actually wanted to do instead picking up my phone as a first resort, I would be a lot more productive.
Entry #6
Experiment
This entry involved a short experiment; going a day without my phone. At the time of writing this I am living at home due to the ongoing pandemic, but I still work and do other various activities throughout my day. I chose to do this on a regular weekday.
The first hours of my day start with online lectures where I choose not to use my phone on any given day, so this was not much of a problem for me. It is very easy to get distracted when you’re at home with a phone and no one to monitor you. After class, around 10am-11am, I usually head for the gym, I did feel a bit of separation anxiety. I was at my local gym and felt very strange because I usually have my Air Pods in during this time which involve having my phone for music selection. I didn’t really know what to do in between sets. I also use it to check my routine and to track my weight progression, so I felt as if I was going in blindly that day. I definitely felt like I was missing something but in the same breath it was a refreshing feeling to be without any technology during that time. I then headed for work after the gym where again, I don’t use my phone.
I had the most trouble when I got back home though. On this particular day I really didn’t have any assignments that were urgent. So, I was very bored. I was looking and reaching for my phone, forgetting that I had put it away for the day. I was skipping around from activity to activity, room to room, looking for something to do. I finally settled for Uno and the television playing in the background for the night. I unintentionally picked up my phone when I was, for the most part, done with my day. I reflected on this experience before bed and felt accomplished. The only hump, for me, is getting over relying on my phone as my primary source of entertainment when I have nothing to do.
Entry #7
Meditating Exercise
I really enjoyed this exercise. I like to stay active, so yoga and meditating are activities I do very frequently for recovery. The only difference this time was that I had my phone with me. I usually have my phone out of sight and use a watch to time myself. I like mediating because it’s a great way to clear your mind and really be in your own zone. With that being said, I didn’t find myself wanting to interact with my phone because I ignored everything around me and just focused on myself and my breathing like the exercise said. It also helped that my phone didn’t go off during this time. I felt very very relaxed at the end of it all. I felt like I had just restarted myself the same way you would a phone. I was refreshed and ready. But it was something I did before bed, so it’s safe to say it contributed to a good night’s sleep. I’ll continue meditating for the foreseeable future.
Entry #8
For this entry, I averaged my data for the month of November. Screen Time only allows you to see data as far back as the 1st of the month you are in. The first bar graph you will see is my weekly average time in minutes for November.
Data:
You can see that in the first two weeks of the month my screen time is low compared to the last two. That is because around mid-November, my family and I moved into our new house. We are without internet and our ISP has limited employees on duty. I have been having to use my phone as a hotspot and for entertainment because my television will use up all of my data if I connect it to my hotspot. Which will leave me without data to do schoolwork. That is why in the last weeks it’s around a 500-minute average or 8 hours. I was pretty satisfied with my usage, understanding why it was up in the last half of the month. I can confidently say that the first two weeks are representative of my usage for most of the year.
The bar graph above displays my most used applications by average time spent in minutes for the month of November. In this graph you can see that my most used application was YouTube. I do spend a fair amount of time on YouTube but it’s usually on my MacBook. A detailed view of my Screen Time for the week of Nov 15–22 shows that I spent an average of 17 hours and 47 minutes on YouTube. That was concerning to say the least. Again, the reason it was so high on my iPhone is because I don’t have Wi-Fi access at the time of writing this. I will definitely have to monitor my time spent on MacBook though. This chart shows that I use Snapchat and Messages a fair amount as well. These two apps are how I keep in touch with friends and family. I am hoping to bring that Snapchat average of 350 minutes way down in the coming months. I have spent around 300 minutes on Chrome this month. That is due to looking things up for class and using Moodle. I use Music a fair bit as well with a 170-minute average. The least used are Google Maps and Tick Tick which is my productivity application where I keep assignment dates and to do lists.
I also wanted to graph my pick-ups. So, I did just that. You can see that it goes up with every passing week which makes sense. The higher average time weeks had more pickups.
This is my location history for the last week of September and the month of November. I didn’t know this was feature on my iPhone. It was honestly really neat looking through this data just to see where I used my phone. The left half is my town Gilbert, where I live. And all the dots on the right side of the picture are the town in which I work and go out to. I don’t deviate from these locations as that’s where everything I need is. I didn’t have any other locations because I have not been traveling this year.
Analysis:
When I registered for this course, I was hoping to do something like this, monitoring phone usage. I honestly had no complaints while working on this project for the duration of the semester. I didn’t change anything when I started monitoring my usage because I wanted an accurate representation of how I am progressing in using my phone more deliberately. I will always have to use my phone or any device because of my interests in computers and technology but this project has exploited my weak points and I’m thankful for that. I don’t know that I could have figured that out without a mandatory semester long blog. There is still a lot of wasted time spent through excessive phone usage. It’s made me aware of what I still need to work on to continue regulating my screen time.