Media Binge
Before starting the media binge watch, I knew that it was going to be a little difficult, even though I already spend a lot of my time on my laptop and cell phone. It wasn’t going to be an easy task for me because I knew that even though I spend hours on my electronics, I still have many responsibilities with school, homework, and studying. The combined time that I spend on my electronics isn’t even comparable to the amount of time that I spend on my responsibilites that actually matter. Knowing this made me realize that media binge watching would be difficult no matter how much I like to procrastinate on social media.
During this time I realized that I constantly check my phone from roughly 8AM to 1AM every day. I always have my phone with me and I happen to always carry my book bag with my laptop inside everywhere I go. On my attempt to media binge watch, most of my activities included checking Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I would check on these social medias everyday in a similar pattern: I wake up and within 2 minutes I check my social media, in between periods when I’m getting ready, as I am walking to class, as I am in class, as i’m munching on my food while I’m eating, in between studying, and I lay on my bed checking, catching up, and closing my social medias before bed. One thing that I found funny on this reflection was the fact that I found myself “catching up” on social media at the end of the night, as if I’ve been away from it all day.
I began to run out of excitement and interest several times throughout the day because I was be on social media all the time. I would find myself refreshing my newsfeed all the time only to find nothing new being posted. Apart from Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, Netflix would be the other media site that I normally visit throughout my binge watch. Within my binge watching I was able to finish 2 seasons of The Walking Dead. Netflix binge watching wasn’t hard because I only watched about 2 episodes a day, roughly 3 hours which isn’t so bad. Getting 2 seasons of the Walking Dead out of the way was considered successful to me.
One of the reasons that I say that the time that I spent on my social media isn’t compared to the amount of time that i’m off of it, is because I check my social media in small intervals of about a minute each time. I don’t sit on my phone for several minutes a time. I found myself always being busy with school and work, but I would still be able to text people back and check up on my social medias without a problem. My lifestyle made it merely impossible to “media binge” as the name suggests.
During this assignment I googled for various websites over Social Media. I came across a website called fastcompany.com that talked about the commandments that one needs to follow in order to fully engage in social media. I thought it was funny and it goes with well the whole concept of media binge, so I thought I'd share:
Thou Shalt Blog (like crazy)
Thou Shalt Create Profiles (everywhere)
Thou Shalt Upload Photos (lots of them)
Thou Shalt Upload Videos (all you can find)
Thou Shalt Podcast (often)
Thou Shalt Set Alerts (immediately)
Thou Shalt Comment (on a multitude of blogs)
Thou Shalt Get Connected (with everyone)
Thou Shalt Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)
Thou Shalt Be Creative (go forth and create creatively)
Media Fast:
My media fasting was even more difficult to do simply because my resources that I needed in order to do well in college relied on the use of my laptop. It wasn’t successful because I constantly used my cell phone to check notifications on Facebook from my campus organization that I am involved in. This was the same case when checking my phone to reach group members, family, and work. Again, my lifestyle doesn’t make it possible to media fast. After noticing both my reflections on binge media and media fast, it was interesting to see that the usage of media simply can’t be done all the time or never, yet so much of our communication and everyday life is done in some form of media involvement.
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