My Life Through Technology
By: Emily Dzikowski
A day with my iPhone
What you're about to read and exprerece, is a day in my life spent with my Smart Phone. You are going to witness and be able to see what I do on a daily basis and how I interact with technology. This is going to bring to light what I do and how often I really am on my phone.
6:45 am
My alarm on my phone goes off, grumpy and tired I roll over to turn it off. After I turn off my alarm, I check my messages and reply to any I got through the night; then instagram. I spend about 5-10 minutes in the morning on Instagram and Twitter, so in reality I dont get out of bed till about 6:55 or 7:00. I dont really do anything else on my phone in the morning except to check the time to make sure I'm not late for school. My boyfriend and other friends don't wake up till later so I don't really look at my phone till about 9:30am. At that time is when I tend to start checking my phone and getting on it more and more throughout the day.
9:30am
At this time im usually in 2nd block, which is either English or Study Hall. This is when i recieve the majority of my messages and reply to all of them. In this period I don't really get that many in these classes I will usually recieve and reply to probably about 20 messages. Depending on the day and how many people I am talking to it could be more of less. In the times I'm not checking my phone or replying to a text I will check my phone periodically to see what time it is or to see if I have a message. And unless I get really bored in the class or the teachers give us permition is when I will get on Instagram or twitter.
10:36am
This is the end of 2nd block, which is now the passing period. I usually get my phone out and text people back. I am either going to my study hall or math class and in both I am very gulity of texting in; especially study hall. I get really bored in the class so for those whole 70 minutes I'm usually on my phone or lap top. If I'm on my lap top the whole period my phone is right becide me and I am also texting people and sometimes checking Instagram or Twitter. The sad part is even if I'm not texting anyone I am constently checking my phone for the time.
Lunch Time (11:52am)
During lunch I've got my phone right next to me the entire time, whether I'm texting the entire lunch or scrolling through pictures on Instagram. But the usual case is I end up texting most of lunch. Which is another 30 minutes I spend on my phone throughout the day.
12:22pm - 1:38pm
Another passing period, this is right after lunch and once again I have either checkced my phone for messages or been on Twitter. Not going to lie here, I am even guilty of callling people in lunch or after lunch. As of right now I tend to mainly text on my phone certain days and rarely am I spending a ton of time on a computer. If I go to photography after this I spend another 70 minute class on the computer; editing pictures or reading up on celeberity gossip on People.com or looking at intresting stories on Yahoo!
2:00pm
It's last period and this class is terribly boring. This entire class period I tend to sit on my phone the whole time, or even watch a movie on my laptop. Depending on if we do anything this period or not determines how much time I really spend on my phone. This is also when I will start texting people about what they are doing after school; that is if I don't work.
3:00pm
Sweet Freedom! We are out of school, finally, and most day I get the joy of going to work. But the usual on my way to my car I'm texting people or calling people. When I get to work I grab a bite to eat and once again sit on my phone and scroll through different news feeds (mostly Instagram) and eat. When I am working my phone is put away and the only technology I use would be the radio, just listening to music. So for those 5 hours I work I'm probably on my phone for about 30 minutes checking it on my down time and reply to people. Since I am a life guard we can't really be staring at our phones the whole time we are up anyway; that probably wouldn't turn out to well..
9:00pm
Except for the occasional times I look at my phone at work, its when I get off work when I am on my phone the most. When I get off work I usually go right for my phone and reply to everyone that has texted me, made sure that I've checked Instagram and Twitter, then thats when I go get dressed and clock out with the finger scanning time clock and finally leave.
9:30pm
This is about the time I get home, I check my phone even before I get out of my car to go inside. When I get in I usually turn on Pandora and listen to music while I get ready for bed. So for another 30 minutes I am listening to music and texting people.
10:00pm
Around this time is when I finally roll into bed. But in reality I don't usually get to sleep until 10:40ish. I finish texting people and rap up our conversations form the day. While doing this I go through Instagram Twitter and sometimes Facebook one more time for the day. Then I turn on my alarm on my phone and try to go to sleep, then I start over the next day.
My Realization
Now after reading many of the articles we've readin class such as; "Unfriending Facebook" and "Is the Web Driving Us Mad?". I honestly didn't think I was that addicted to my phone, I just thought there where a few extreme cases of kids and teens really addicted to thier phones. After filling out that log and really thinking about how much time i really spend on my phone is kind of crazy. I never would have thought that I spend as much time on my phone that I really do.
Some of the things I heard about in Mrs. Young's Digital DNA presentaion, seemed a little crazy and out there but after finding out that people can tract you and can get so much information just from a people tracting website is kind of scary. Espically when we could just put our name or someone elses name in, get thier address and phone number and other information that you would'nt necessarily want some random person knowing about you. After hearing all of these things I plan to not spend nearly as much time on my phone and definatly watching what I put on social networking sites, as well as putting all of my settings to private and being cautious of everything I put out there. Becasue it clearly never goes away.
And to be quite honest I couldn't really tell you why I spend so much time on my phone. I guess I Just like talking to people. I'm also not sure if I could really go a whole entire day without my phone. It would probably be a lot harder than it looks.