Media Binge and Fast

The media binge and media fast were very different from what I thought it was going to be like. I am in a weird situation with my normal amount of media consumption because I really like watching the news and reading newspapers and getting the traditional news, but I really do not text that much and am really not on my phone that often. I do not have cable TV where I live so it is difficult for me to regularly sit down and watch a show, but I enjoy streaming things on my laptop whenever I have time, which is pretty rare.

For the media binge, I really just tried to get on social media more. I have always resisted the urge of getting a twitter because I was afraid I would get hooked and spend a ton of time just scrolling on my phone. So for these couple of days I invested in a new social media and really concentrated on paying more attention to Facebook and Instagram while also downloading an app my girlfriend uses all the time called Ifunny. I also downloaded this game that a lot of my friends play called Clash Royale, which I found out was pretty addicting. So for these couple of days I really invested myself in a lot of different types of media that I am not really used to being a part of. Some of them I found were very entertaining, while others seemed to just soak up my time. I did not get very into Twitter because I was not sure who to follow for the best experience and I only had a couple followers so it was not really worth it to tweet myself. I usually read before I go to bed, but I found this time replaced with either Ifunny or Clash Royale, which really limited the amount of sleep I got. Overall the experience with the media binge was unfavorable. I posted in an earlier blog about my dislike of everyone always being on their phones, and after downloading all those new Apps I understand why people do that. I would much rather read a book before bed or really do anything else with my time than just waste it on pointless Apps.

The media fast was something that I thought was going to be much easier because I usually do not consume much media on a regular basis. I started off by deleting all the apps that I had downloaded which was not very hard to do. The hardest aspect was just not looking at the news online or reading the newspaper in the morning. I like to come back to my Fraternity house and just sit in the living room for a while and watch a basketball game or something. Most of my relaxing things that I do involve just sitting back and watching something on YouTube and I did not notice how much time I actually spent doing this. I thought I was pretty good about not being on my phone, but not being able to really use it was much harder than I originally thought it was going to be. Especially coming off of a media binge where I used a lot more media than I usually do it felt weird to not use any at all. I think that if I started off with the media binge it would have been much easier.

Overall, the whole experience made me realize that I do use my phone a lot even when I thought I did not. But by downloading more apps that my friends constantly use, I realized that it could definitely be worse. I can work to not be on my phone and computer a lot, but it is so easy to just watch videos or movies when I am bored and nothing is going on. Reading is something that I really enjoy, so I could just do that more, but I feel like that might make it feel like work rather than just doing it whenever I really want to. The amount of media I consume is much more traditional than most people my age, with reading the newspaper and watching the news on TV, but I can still work on not letting technology control my life.