Vlog and notes from my fast

Here are my notes from the media fast and a vlog about my thoughts after the fast.

Notes on the fast:

09:41
So I just woke up and haven’t been able to go online as I usually do. I already feel kinda strange about being offline. I guess its because I know, that I wont be able to go online for the rest of the day. Also my whole morning routine is out of whack because I didn’t spend the usual 20 minutes reading the news and browsing social media.

14.34
So, I’m about halfway through the day, and I gotta be honest, being offline is really hard. I am doing some reading for a class, and I’ve suddenly become aware of how much procrastinating I do online when I am preparing for classes. Every five or ten minutes I think “oh, I wanna google this, or I gotta check that” and normally I probably would have every time the urge to procrastinate came upon me. The upside is that I have been very effective with my reading.
I am starting to think that being on a media fast is actually a lot like going on a regular fast or diet. Normally you would just eat when you’re hungry, but when your dieting, food is constantly on your mind. I am constantly thinking about being online today, and normally it is something that I wouldn’t put much thought to.

22:47
I am headed for bed, so this will be my last update. I really look forward to going online tomorrow. All the stuff I wanted to do online has been constantly on my mind through out the entire day. During the social media tracking I was surprised at how little time I spent on social media, because I thought I used it a lot more. After today I know why. I think I actually spend a lot of time online doing things that aren’t necessarily social media related, like “window shopping” in webshops, visiting news sites and googling random information. Oh, how I’ve missed Wikipedia today.

Media fast

So, tomorrow I am going to do my 24 hour media fast. I am going to stay away from all internetbased media with two exceptions – Netflix and Spotify.

I do have cable tv, so I could choose to stay away from Netflix as well, but I’m so used to choosing exactly what I want to watch and not having to rely on the programming of the tv channels, so I think I would get really frustrated if I had to spend my sunday night watching bad tv (I know I could just read a book or something, but let’s face it, it’s sunday night, I want to eat junk food and watch tv). I listen to all my music on Spotify, so I really have no alternative there, if I want to listen to music.

Before I go to bed tonight, I am going to turn off the wifi access on both my laptop, iPad and iPhone. My phone also has 3G internet access, so I am going to turn this of as well. This way I won’t accidentally go online. With regards to my two exceptions, this means that I will only be able to watch Netflix on my tv, and on Spotify I will only have access the music I have made available offline.

I am not going to announce my absence on Facebook or anything. I will make sure to reply to all unanswered messages by tonight, and then whatever comes in during the fast will have to wait till monday.

I am going to journal my thoughts during the fast, at least three times. When I wake up and won’t be able to go through my usual morning routine of reading the news and a few blogs and checking Facebook and Instragram, in the middle of the day and before I go to bed. If I feel very affected by the fast, I might make more journal entries than these three.

Wish me luck 🙂

/Vibeke

Two days of tracking, done

I have now tracked my social media use for the last two days. Here is a summary of my notes.

Day 1

The first day I spent a total of 31 minutes on social media. Of these 31 minutes, 20 minutes were spent on Facebook, 6 minutes were on Pinterest and 5 on Instagram.

I had anticipated that this would be a day without much use of social media. I am currently without an iPhone and can only use social media when I’m at home, at my job or the university. Since I was out the whole day, this meant that I didn’t have many opportunities for checking Facebook etc.

My actions on social media this day consisted mostly of going through other peoples updates, posts and pins. Besides that I posted a link on my boyfriends Facebook-wall, liked two pictures on Facebook and one on Instagram and repinned a single pin on Pinterest.

Day 2

The second day I spent a total of 27 minutes on social media. 12 minutes on Facebook, 11 minutes on Instagram and 4 minutes on Pinterest.

I had anticipated to use social media a lot more, since I was home for most of the day, but for reasons unknown I actually spent less time than the day before, where I was out of the house the whole day.

I actually had no “interactions” with others on Facebook during the day. I only looked through other peoples post. On Instagram I liked three photos and on Pinterest I repinned one pin.

My thoughts

I am very surprised at how little I have actually used social media these last few days. Though having my iPhone as usual would probably have meant more time spent on social media, I don’t think these two days differ greatly from my normal use of social media. I have often “felt guilty” when spending time on social media, because I believed I was wasting a lot of time. But realising that my average time spent on social media these past two days have been just around 30 minutes each day, I definitely won’t feel as guilty about it in the future.  

When I get my new iPhone I might just do another tracking of my social media use, just because I am curious to see how much more time I spend when I am able to go online anytime and anywhere.

During the weekend I will post a video update on the blog, where I will talk more about how I actually socialised with people on the social media during the tracking days.

 

My tracking plan

Sorry about being late with this post. I have been in bed with at cold for the last few days. But, better late than never, here is my tracking plan.

My 48-hour tracking will take place thursday October 24 and friday October 25.

This assignment is about tracking social media use, so not all my online actions will be relevant to track. The social media I use on a daily basis are Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest and I will be tracking my use of these particular media. Should I be visiting other sites/apps that can be considered social media, I will track my visits here too.

Normally a lot of my social media use would take place on my iPhone, but it was stolen a few weeks ago, and since I haven’t got a new one yet, I am using my iPad and laptop instead. This has meant a huge change in my use of social media. With my iPhone I was able to connect with social media anywhere, but these days I am only able to connect at home or other places with wifi such as the university. This has diminished my use of social media, and my media use during the tracking period would probably be different, if I had my iPhone as normally. This is unfortunate, but there is nothing I can do about it.

For sessions on my computer, I will use Quicktime to make video captures of what is going on on the screen. This will make it easy to track both my time on each medium and my exact actions. For sessions on my iPad I will have to make notes instead and use screen captures.

After each session, I will make some raw notes about why I went online, why I chose this particular medium, what my thougts were during the session and so on. I might write these notes down or make them in videoform.

Before each day I am going to write a few lines about how I expect to use social media the coming day. This way I can compare my expectations of social media use and my actual use, and it might give me an idea about how aware I am about my use of social media.