Mims Media Binge

Media Binge and Fast

Oh man, what a week. First I’m on my technology (mostly my phone) too much, and then on hardly on it at all. I tell ya what, it certainly was a rollercoaster of emotions.

Im usually pretty good at being aware of how much Im on my phone or laptop, and try to not get sucked into the never endless black hole that makes up social media. But during the media binge on Monday and Tuesday of this week I forced myself to use technology as much as possible. When I was on my phone during those two days I was usually switching between in an endless cycle between Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. After the first consecutive 30 min I had already had my fair share of social media for the hour. I had seen all of the Instagram photos, scrolled through my Twitter timeline that was covered with way too many retweets that I could give a damn about, and seen my aunts new Facebook post about the rose garden that she was going to plant this year.

I had reached my limit

In 30 min.

To be frank I just went through the whole cycle again, trying to catch the couple new insta posts, and spent a little more time surfing through twitter. I could really see my filter bubble, as there was a common theme of climbing and kayak videos in both my Twitter and Instagram explore feeds. It wasn’t until I hit Facebook again that I hit my stride and found how I would kill as much time as possible. One of my friends had shared a link to a video with that British cooking show guy Gordon Ramsay, and I just followed the never ending stream of Gordon Ramsay videos.

It worked

When I would get done scrolling through Twitter and Instagram, I would watch Gordon Ramsay videos on YouTube (I eventually finished the Facebook Thread). And that pretty much sums up my media binge. I truly did not mind needing to have a screen in front of me for two days, but I did notice that I didn’t get nearly enough done as I should have, I was just so distracted by Gordon and his insane cooking talent. It was the technology fast that followed the binge that annoyed me.

As I said earlier, Im usually pretty good at regulating how much time I spend on social media, and so the media binge part wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. In face, it was refreshing in a way knowing that I had educational excuse (rather than a moral one) not to look at Twitter during class. It was the lack of communication that came with trying not to use my phone that really got to me.

            Our generations communication is based around our phones, especially on the weekends. It was such a drag not to be able to look at Groupme and see what everyone was doing for the evening, and not being able to check my messages (although I do have to say, I texted my mother for a while about when Id be coming home from school...). It made me realize how much I rely on my phone to communicate with the world, through both texting/calling and social media. I used to have all of my friend’s house phone numbers memorized, and would call them to see if they wanted to hang out. Now I don’t even do that, I just shoot them a text. That was probably the biggest thing that I learned through this fast, however. I hardly call people anymore unless its for something urgent or would be too long to text.

Why don’t I do that more?

Well, I think Im going to try to call people more.

And I suppose the filter bubble isn’t a totally bad thing.. I mean.. now I have Gordon Ramsay showing me how to cook salmon on my explore feed, all thanks to this media binge.