Are You Really Addicted to Your Phone??

Hello to everyone who is currently reading this blog post!! It has felt like forever! NOT! I am back again to share the newest things I have been learning in class. If you have read my last post, you will see that we talked about how addicted people are to their phones and discussed Zomorodi's view on why it is their fault. We also talked about Williams' thoughts on why he believes tech companies are responsible for people becoming addicted. But this time around, we discussed Rob Walker's views, which are exactly the same as Manoush Zomorodi's views. To understand his perspective, I completed one last challenge. Then, my whole class had to create a social media/phone challenge that pushes people to think more like James Williams and less like Zomorodi and Walker.

For the last challenge I had to complete, I had to choose between five different challenges. The five challenges came from Walker's book, The Art of Noticing. The first challenge from this selection is creating an auditory inventory. The instructions for this were to note all the sounds you heard at a certain time and write them down. The second challenge was to sketch a room we were just in. We were to survey the room we were currently in, walk into a different room, and sketch the room with as much detail as we could remember. The third challenge was to look out a window for ten minutes. You find a window you normally don't take time to look out of and look for three things you have not noticed before or describe what you are seeing. The fourth challenge was to repeat your point of view. You would find somewhere to sit and would sit there everyday for fifteen minutes and watch the people who passed by. This challenge was made for people to realize that not everything is the "same view" after all. The final challenge that my class could choose from was the take a color walk challenge. For this test, you had to take an hour-long walk and answer five questions. The five questions that you were asked are:

1. What are the colors that you become aware of first?
2. What are the colors that reveal themselves more slowly?
3. What colors do you observe that you did not expect?
4. What color relationships do you notice?
5.  Do colors appear to change over time?    

The challenge I chose to attempt was the sketch a room challenge. I thought this challenge would be fun to attempt compared to the other ones. If I am being honest, I felt like this challenge was more of a memory challenge instead of an attention challenge. I feel like I was just testing how well I could remember details about my own room that I stay in everyday and how well I could draw. (Which is not very good because I still can not draw to save my life.) So basically, I think I did very well in this challenge because I was able to draw all the major details of my room and include a lot more little details than I thought I was going to be able to include.

After a week of discussing the three theorists, talking about all the different challenges my classmates completed and the results of those challenges, we started to discuss our next presentation. Like I have mentioned before, our goal was to create our own social media challenge that would push people to think more in terms of James Williams and his thoughts about how companies are forcing us to become addicted to our technology, instead of Manoush Zomorodi and Rob Walker's belief that people become addicted because of themselves. So I created a challenge that combined being active on your phone while noticing the differences around you. This challenge is inspired by when I was hanging out with my friend. We were sitting in my car, scrolling through TikTok. When we looked up from our scrolling, we saw two things that we thought were hilarious. We saw two guys come up to an art installation and one of them started climbing up the art installation. The guy on top of the installation started posing in different ways while his friend took pictures of him at the top. When we shifted our gaze, we saw a staff member walking across the grass with a plastic bag and cardboard box of food. As we kept watching, we saw him start to run.  We then noticed that a hawk was following him pretty closely. That's when we realized that there was a hawks nest in one of the trees and that the hawk was probably feeling a little territorial. So the challenge I created works like this:

1. Find a place you can "people watch" (ex. park or a parking lot)
2. Note what is happening and what you can see 
3. Find something you can do on your phone
4. Look down at your phone for about five minutes, then look back up
5. Note what has changed from the last time you looked up

I think this challenge helps people think in terms of Williams' because it's not making people feel bad about being on their phone. I think that you can learn a lot from being on your phone. You can learn new recipes to try, about what's going on in the world around us, or what's happening in the lives of your friends you haven't seen in a while. By being on your phone and looking up every once in a while, you can learn new things.

That's all I have for you this time! I'll see you next time for my last blog post on here! See you next time!

why are influencers so special?

 Have you ever wondered why social media influencers are a thing? From famous Youtubers, Tiktokers and instagrammers to all media platforms, what makes people drawn to these influencers? 

To start us off, what is an influencer ?

An influencer is defined as a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.

So how does that relate to us and how we use social media?

Social media can be used as many things but it is being transformed into a marketing dream. Every post is really just an ad for some type of product or service, with its users being the consumers/buyers. 

This brings us into influencers. They are a tool for these platforms to be able to sell us things. By using people to show their products we feel like there is a more personable approach to buying things than if we were to see an ad on Tv. These influencers connect with their audiences by sharing details about their everyday lives with us. Im sure you’ve heard the clever line of “you guys aren’t just my followers but my friends”, this is just another way for followers to feel important which can lead to us buying more products. 

Even though influencers are really just another tool to market products/services there is a strange connection we hold with them. Because they are everyday people we put a level of trust onto them, we believe them when they talk about products they actually love. Influencers are also important because they are able to voice things and create a community of like minded people. “To capitalize on engaged social media audiences, it’s important for brands to realize that social media platforms and digital influencers are not simply vehicles to distribute a brand’s message – they are actual communities with special sets of norms, values, and ways of communicating. Campaigns are most successful when companies recognize what makes every social community’s unique culture and niche interests”. 

Social media influencers may seem like they have the easiest job in the world, but when you really look at it they are the bridge from buyers to companies and creating a unique space for everyone to be heard and seen when going online. 

sources 

https://mediakix.com/blog/why-we-love-social-media-stars/

My Strange Addiction: A Cellular Device

A really clear depiction of a cellular device being in control of a person through a charger

    When is the last time you grabbed your phone? If it's been more than an hour since you've touched your phone then you are either busy doing something, or you have a stronghold on your will to keep you from something taking your focus. If it's been around 30 minutes then you are working toward that full control of your life instead of the phone. If you are like me however, it has been less than 10 minutes and there is no chance it goes on a minute longer without staring at your phone for another second. 

    What is it about these devices that keep us hooked on to them? The culture within this day and age has become heavily reliant on these devices. From alarm clocks and calendar reminders, to the pinnacle of keeping in touch with everyone and anyone through social media. We have become interlocked with the use of our phones daily. How much are we really missing out on from our phones? 

    Rob Walker wrote a book entitled, "The Art Of Noticing", which is a book filled with 131 challenges for creativity and inspiration. For the sake of this blog, this book helps with opening up a person to focusing on the actual world over the world our phones have created for us to crave. Within these challenges, My professor, Dr. Vrooman, has given us a few to focus on through our social media class at TLU. 

    Surfing through the options I found one that stuck out to me since I live on the 3rd floor of my apartment building: Look Out A Window. 

    The results of this were more radical than I imagined. The idea of this challenge was to simply identify three objects I don't usually notice from first glance. I came across some crazy discoveries. Shingles indeed are the roof protection to any housing was my first observation. It was the second observation that began my discoveries. Grass is green. How in the world does it decipher itself as green? Yes science is a huge role in that of course I am aware of all that good stuff. However, isn't it crazy how objects and the things of this earth are just the color that they are? I began to even question how our brain is able to make things function on its own without pressing buttons to create actions like a video game. I ditched the challenge at this point but you get the idea. 

    How does this connect to the original idea behind this post? I am not sure. What if we are missing the whole concept behind the use of phones? 

    Every time we see challenges like the one I used, it is all surrounded on the idea that we are the problem with an addiction to a device that is without fault. The problem seems to be forced on to the user and their innate need for social interaction, and that interaction has been filled with the capabilities of social media through phones. 

    I feel like there is another way to prepose the idea of getting more blame on the phone over a person. I prepose people mimic the concept of window shopping!

    When someone states they are window shopping, they are simply looking and not buying. In the same way, the challenge will focus on people looking without interacting, but at the time that they CHOOSE to. How does one do this? Turn off your notifications to every social media application. Our phones become a distraction from the buzz it gives in our pocket. Taking away that distraction may get us to look up more and not be pulled away from what we are focused on within that certain time frame. 

Give it a try! This isn't the absolute answer of course, but it is worth a try! 

Look Up!

Last week, we learned about James Williams' Stand Out of Our Light. We took his discussion about the way that our phones distract us from our reality and pull us into an unknowing world in which we are consumed. Over the past couple of weeks, we practiced that. We took the concepts we learned with Williams and applied them to some of Manoush Zomorodi's Broad and Brilliant and Rob Walker's Art of Noticing.

For the purpose of this blog, we are going to focus on the challenges in Rob Walker's book. Our professor provided a list of five short challenges for us to take on. Simple enough, we could choose to sit and listen to some things around us for a bit, sketch a room from memory, look out a window, sit by a window or in a room you may not normally sit in, or take a color walk.

Seems kinda dumb, huh? (I'm just saying what we all thought so if you see this, Vroomen, don't be mad).

actual representation of me people-watching at 11:30pm

I started my challenge late one night after work and chose to look out the living room window for a few minutes. At first, I had the urge to be bored and check my phone but after a while, it went away and I started noticing the number of people walking on the side of my dorm building at 11:30 at night (weirdos), I noticed a line of small trees behind the large one I had never noticed before, I noticed the number of cars in the parking, a broken light at a building across the street, and other little things.

Once I noticed the number of things I hadn't noticed before my mind began drifting further into thought:

"Where are these people going? Can they see me staring at them from the second floor? If they looked up here would I be scared? Would they? Why have I never seen anyone in the other windows when I'm walking around campus? I don't recognize them..."

A guy in my class actually did the same challenge and he went into a similar spiral. After looking out of the window for a few minutes, he somehow began thinking a lot about why we have fingers, how they move, how our brain can just tell our bodies to do something and we do.

(Now there are two types of people reading this right now: the first will completely understand because we have these thoughts on a regular basis; the other will think it is crazy because they haven't ever thought like this.)

Regardless of the reader you are, the point of the discussion we got out of class that day was about our attention. it was about how our minds have changed and stopped noticing things that aren't necessarily right in front of our faces anymore. The theory of the 3 men we have learned from and discussed recently is that our phones (and technology in general) have taken away our ability to be detailed oriented. We forget to notice the little things around us and enjoy the moments without a screen 2 inches from our bodies.

The challenges take 5 minutes of your time but they are worth it. They gave me a refreshing start to my days. They reminded me of why I go do the things I do and it's not for me to record for later, it is for me to live in the moment. Whether we are alone or with people, we need to remind ourselves to step outside of the hold technology has on us and come up for air every once in a while. 

Look up and enjoy what is around you.

Try one of these challenges and let me know...

Are we addicted to our phones?

 

Looking at his phone | Pascal Colin | Flickr

Do phrases such as these sound familiar to you?:

• “When are you going to get off your phone?”

• “It’s like you're addicted to your phone.”

• “Can’t you go 5 seconds without your phone?”

If you have heard these phrases or something similar to them, I’m right there with you. Whether you have heard these things from colleagues, friends, family, or society, it seems like we can’t escape judgment for using our phones. 

It’s ironic really. For society to normalize smartphones as a common and basically essential tool for people, we still simultaneously have this tendency to criticize our use of our technological advancements. When you really think about it, we use our phones for a lot of various reasons which can include communication, entertainment, work, etc.

In my last blog post, I discussed the teaching of James Williams from his book Stand Out of Our Light. Just as a quick refresher, Williams argues that the significant amount of attention that we may find ourselves giving our phones is not entirely our fault. Phone and app producers have made it to where they have created material that intrigues our attention constantly, encouraging us to give our attention over to these devices. Although we have our own goals, our devices have their own goal that conflicts with our own: gaining our attention. In addition to these particular phone habits not being our faults, it is also not the phone and app producers faults either. They may play a factor in this matter, but Williams points out how no one goes into their job with the intention of making people’s lives harder. We have to make efforts that encourage our devices to align without our own goals instead of fighting against them. 

However, not everyone thinks like this. A lot of people like to voice this “phone addiction” narrative because that is what they have been consistently exposed to throughout the years. Which helps this harmful narrative to continue on with shaming people and their utilization of phones. 

We are constantly made to feel embarrassed and shamed for how we use our phones or for how long we use them. This phone addiction narrative that we’ve been fed for years has even sparked the creation of support groups and treatment regiments that are intended to help a person have better control over their “addiction.”

But the word “addition” suggests that we do not have a choice in our use of our phones. Since applying the “addiction” label to devices, we have suddenly treated phones as the equivalent of drugs. When in reality, these two things are very different and have different effects on a person. Yet someone way back in the beginning of the age of smartphones placed the “addiction” label on technology because it was convenient. And as a result, we now have people self conscious about their phone habits and constantly questioning if they have a legitimate problem. 

For the past few weeks, my classmates and I were assigned to attempt various challenges from Manoush Zomorodi. Zomorodi argues that our phones hinder us from being bored. Which might sound positive to many, but Zomorodi views boredom and the state of being bored as a helpful tool that can help spark creativity and help your brain from being constantly stimulated. 

Zomorodi offered us 7 different challenges that encouraged participants to put down their phones:

1. Monitor the amount of time you use your phone.

2. No devices in motion

3. No pictures 

4. Delete “that” app

5. Take a “fakecation”

6. Observe something

7. Get bored and think about a problem you’ve been trying to solve

I tried 4 of these challenges: challenges 1, 2, 3, and 6.

Challenge #1 (Monitor the amount of time you use your phone):

Challenge #1 was pretty interesting for me. When I checked out just how long I used my phone, my phone reported a daily average of 6 hour and 6 minutes. And this challenge got even more interesting as I looked into what apps I used predominantly during that daily average. You can see those details below. 

So let's see here. Let’s try to make sense of all of this.

I use TikTok quite often. That’s not new information for me. I know that I fall down a few TikTok holes throughout the day. With an algorithm that caters towards my interests (books, art, pop culture, etc.) it’s pretty easy for me to be entertained by this app for a good amount of time. 

Safari is in second place because I use it frequently for school. I use it to log onto class pages, for my job, research material, etc. And in addition to using Safari mainly for school, I do use it for entertainment purposes as well. Mainly to read articles and watch videos. 

SnapChat and Instagram are up there because they are the two apps that allow me to chat with one of my best friends who is currently studying abroad. We’ve discovered that these apps still allow us to stay connected. 

Messages and Mail are up on this list for a simple reason: they’re my main means of communicating with friends and family. I definitely use my messages and email apps everyday. How much I use them in a day completely depends on communication circumstances.

Messenger is there because that is what my mother and I use to do our daily digital calls to catch up at the end of our days. A lot of that time is admittedly us messing around with filters and playing games.

So cool! I now know why I spend a little over 6 hours on my phone on a daily basis. A lot can happen in 6 hours, but in truth, I don't feel guilty for spending that much time on my phone. Even with using my phone everyday, I still manage to get my school work done, complete tasks for my job, catch up with family and friends, and take time to unwind on social media. I still get everything I needed/wanted to get done by the end of each day in a timely manner. And my phone helps me do all of that. So why would I feel bad about using it? I don’t feel like I'm some kind of addict that can’t control my phone consumption time. I know why I use my phone so much, and I’m happy to know this device helps me with tasks I have. Sure, at times, I’ll admittedly stay on TikTok longer than I’ve intended to, but I had fun on TikTok. And I still get everything done. So, no real harm. 

Challenge #2 (No devices in motion):

This challenge wasn’t as interesting for me compared to challenge #1. In truth, I don’t use my phone in motion unless I’m messaging someone back. The day I tested out this challenge, I only caught myself doing this once. That was when I was walking up the stairs while on my home and texting back my friend. It took me 2 seconds, and sure, I could've done that sitting down. But I headed upstairs to read a book. So I just took care of something on my way to my room. 

I didn’t feel like using my phone here harmed me or anyone else in any way. I again didn’t feel like an addict. It just seemed like a normal action that took under a minute. 

Challenge #3 (No pictures):

Now this challenge was actually pretty interesting for me. The day I tried this challenge I only felt the urge to take a picture once. It was when I was in Barnes and Nobles and I wanted to take a picture of a book so I could remember to add it to my to-read list. I caught myself before I snapped the picture and instead searched it up in Google and left the tab open for later. 

This challenge made me realize how I use photos as a reminder for myself. When you think about it, it’s a simple means of reminding one self. I take pictures or screen shots of items and then there they are in my photos. By the end of the day when I check my photos I have a helpful series of photos that helps me make sure I completed various tasks. Simple and easy. So I honestly don’t feel bad for using my camera on a daily basis. It helps me throughout my day.

Plus if I don’t use my camera ever, how am I going to capture photos like these when the opportunity presents itself?:

(Yes, that's my dog)

Challenge #6 (Observe something):

This challenge was nice. I took 15 minutes to just lay down on my bed with my dog and observe the surrounding details. I noticed things such as how the sun beams shone on my bed in a stripe-like pattern due to my blinds, the way the leaves rustled in the tree, my desk was dusty (I cleaned it), my dog’s snores, etc. It was a nice moment to just be. But if I’m being honest, I observe my surroundings all the time. I like looking for details in surrounding areas and environments that I’m in. This challenge was a nice little excuse to keep doing that.

Had I been on my phone, would I have caught all of these details? Perhaps not, but I’m not on my phone all the time. So eventually I would’ve gone back to observing. So this challenge didn’t make me feel like a phone addict either.

Although I understand that Zomorodi was trying to get us to consider a perception that didn’t include the presence of phones, I didn’t feel like these challenges were fantastic. I basically revealed to myself that I use my phone. Yup! I definitely do that. Is my phone my whole life? No. Does it aid me in my life? Yup! But as much as I use my phone for various reasons, I don’t feel like I don’t have any control over how much I use my phone or that I’m a “phone addict”. I just feel like someone that utilizes their smartphone in a society that has normalized smartphones. 

And maybe that’s how you feel. You know you use your phone, but that’s why you have a phone: to use it. Use your phone! If you feel like you personally are not happy with your device use habits, then you can work towards adjusting your habits towards your own liking. But that should be your decision. No one else's. You shouldn’t be made to feel like you can’t use your phone, or that you have to deliberately put it away in order to experience life. Smartphones are now a part of our everyday society, and thus, a part of our lives. Be aware of your habits if you feel that you need to, but don’t feel ashamed for having used your phone.

 Living with Distraction and Diminished Attention 

It is no secret that within the last decade social media has become increasingly popular since the dawn of the smartphone. Everyone is involved in it, and now, a lot of people feel as though they cannot escape it. A lot of world events, viral moments, and interesting concepts and revelations are usually shared through social media for the first time now, which contributes to people's inclination to be on social media so that they can witness these things firsthand. In the age of social media that we have slowly grown accustomed to, at times it can feel as though anything interesting that adequately stimulates your brain comes from your phone, so we start to spend more time on it as we slowly tune out the reality of the world around us. 

Recently, I took notice of my social media usage and decided to look into my phone's analytics to see exactly how much time I spent on my phone, as well as the various apps I shift between. Overall, I found that I spend at least 2 hours on my phone every day on average, if not more. Furthermore, the most used app of mine is TikTok, with a total of 7 hours on that app for the week, almost a full shift of work spent on one app. Now, there is potentially an entire blog post that could be made to discuss how TikTok is able to reliably get their customers to come back and stay on the app but for the purpose of this blog post that lengthy topic would best be sidelined for now. In total, I spent 20 hours and 42 minutes on my phone this past week and of that time, I spent 15 hours and 26 minutes just using various social media apps. Nearly a full day I spent just on my phone scrolling through endless content to stimulate my brain. Now in retrospect, I cannot help but wonder, why did I even bother? I am sure I have learned a lot during this past week from the social media content, but in retrospect, none of it has furthered my goals or helped my ambitions; so why did I spend so much time on my phone? Well, the simple answer is that I wanted to at the moment so I did, however, why did I want to?

This past unit, we spent a lot of time on James Williams and a lot of the arguments and concepts he brought to the table in regards to how we, as humans, have to adapt to the age of social media so that we do not allow it to consume our lives and make us unproductive. Instead, we need to use it as a tool, not something that preys on our innate need to be liked and decreasing attention span. In this new era, social media has taken over and it is hard to escape it, but that has been the point the entire time. Every social media app, from TikTok to Facebook, has the end goal of wanting as many people using their site as possible and ensuring they spend as much time as they are willing on the site. In addition to this, research on human psychology has been used to manipulate people into spending more time on their phones and applications, so it really is no wonder how our collective attention span has decreased and how we live in a state of the constant distraction of what could come next or what we feel we need to see in the future. No one wants to feel left out of the fun, so we scroll through and keep up with the trends. Furthermore, by design, a lot of social media applications are intended to be tailored to one's own likes, interests, desires, and weaknesses. This makes it so that when we start to think "maybe I should get off my phone and do something" something can immediately distract us, keep our attention away from the previous thought, and keep engaging and consuming media content. 

Last week, I engaged in some challenges that tested my ability to restrain from my phone use and engage in the real world more than I had in the previous weeks. Though it was for an assignment, I still think the various tests I put myself through were worthwhile. One of them, I had to refrain from using TikTok for the day. Initially, I thought that I would have an easy time and could get through it without it really affecting me. Come to find later when I am sitting on the toilet or waiting outside for my dog to finish her business so I can let her inside, this challenge was actually taking an effort of me to complete. I had to actively choose to put my phone down and just live with the world around me. Furthermore, a different task asked me to take notice of the different sounds around me. For that activity, I decided to go outside with my dog and sit there for an hour or so. I began to hear things that I previously tuned out and paid no attention to; the other dogs barking in the neighborhood, the wind blowing and rustling the leaves, the clucks of my neighbor's chickens, the distant wind chime that I could barely hear, and the humming of cars passing by. While I am sure I "heard" these things before when I was on my phone, however, I was distracted and had my attention on short videos, so I likely became habituated to the different sounds because they did not mean anything to my goals at the time. 

All in all, I can now admit that, yeah, I do probably use my phone more than necessary and I am prone to be distracted. Additionally, sure, my attention span does suck and sometimes I do blow things off if I am uninterested. However, the first step to solving anything is recognizing the problem, so hopefully, I can become more mindful of my social media use, and choose to spend more time at the moment in front of me and the opportunities it brings. 

Addicted to my phone??

 Hey everyone!!!! Sorry it took so long. I was on spring break and attempting to actually take a break from school work. But I was partially successful. Over my break, I was tasked to complete a series of social media challenges. So it was not too hard of homework over the break, but it was something that I had to think about. Overall, I had a good restful spring break and now I am ready to be back and talk with all of you! So for this post, I am going to explain what we talked about in class, what challenges I attempted, and my results from the attempted challenges.

At the start of this unit, we discussed Manoush Zomorodi's and James Williams' theories that people are addicted and obsessed with their phones. Zomorodi believes that when we are bored, we automatically go to our phones, so any free time we have will be spent on our phones. Williams' believes that technology competes to capture our attention.  One of these people blame the individual for becoming obsessed with their phones. The other believes it is the companies fault that we are addicted. Williams' wrote an entire book analyzing his theory. Zomorodi created seven days worth of different technology challenges to help try and understand how often we are actually using technology everyday.

The first challenge that was assigned to me was to track how much I used my phone and which apps were the most popular ones I was using. For this challenge, I had to turn on my Phone's tracking feature, which I had never turned on before this challenge. I tracked my phone usage for twenty-four hours and I was expecting the results I got. A majority of the time I was using my phone, I was using it for technology. My two apps that I spent most of my time on were TikTok and Twitter. The third app that I spent most of my time on is the Apple Music app. I normally have music on in the background whenever I do anything, so I am not surprised that my phone tracker says I spend a lot of time on it. The fifth app that I spent a lot of time on is the Safari internet browser. At the time I was completing some homework, so I spent a lot of time on it. I spent about the same amount of time on apps six and seven. My sixth and seventh apps were Instagram and Pinterest. I used Instagram for entertainment and Pinterest for my job. The final app that I spent the most time on in a twenty-four hour period is a matching puzzle game. When I work on homework, I have the game open on my phone, and every so often when I need a break, I will look down and play for a couple of minutes.

As I have mentioned before, I had to choose three different challenges for three different days. For the first day, I chose to attempt the challenge of not taking any pictures. Going into this challenge, I thought I was going to fail immediately. As the day went on, I realized I was not thinking about taking any pictures. I expect to at least take five different pictures throughout the day, whether it was for school or to keep a memory. Surprisingly, I passed the day one challenge and did not feel the need to take a picture of anything all day.

For my second day challenge, I chose to attempt the observe something else challenge. The goal of this challenge is to reclaim the art of observing. Over the break, I had to run many different errands. There were many errands that I had to drive to San Antonio for. Because I knew that I needed to complete this challenge, I asked my mom to go with me to run the errands so she could drive the car. For this challenge, I decided that instead of being on my phone for the drive, I would not look down at my phone. I would look out the window and notice how much had changed since I last drove to San Antonio. I have also completed this challenge successfully. What I noticed from this challenge is that there are a lot more buildings and restaurants instead of a bunch of fields like the ones I grew up with.

The last challenge I decided to try out is the get bored and think about a problem you are trying to solve challenge. I was also successful with this challenge. This one was pretty easy compared to the other two, in my opinion. I just sat on my bed and thought about how I was going to be able to get all of my school work done by the end of the semester. While sitting on my bed, dissecting my problem, I came up with a couple of different solutions for my problem. I had mixed feelings about this challenge. At first it made me feel really uncomfortable and nervous because I am not used to thinking about how many things I need to get done that far in advance. At the same time, I felt a little better because I knew what I needed to do and when certain things needed to get done.

Overall, I found these challenges fairly easy. I was expecting it to be a little harder because I do think I spend a lot of time on my phone where I do think at times I am addicted to it. I think the hardest challenge for me was the observe something else challenge. These challenges helped me understand how often people are on their phones and how it can feel like an obsession.

That's all that I have for you this time around! I'll see you here next time!

A Life Offline

 Imagine a world where you didn't have any technology to suck you into a mindless world of existence. I know we've all heard our parents talk about the days they stayed out till the street lights came on or our grandparents' tracks through the snow to school every day, but seriously. No Instagram to scroll through, no Facebook to pretend to enjoy, no PlayStation to hop online with, no Game Cube to play on for hours, no payphone to call your parents from the library. Then what would you do to keep yourself entertained?

That's the theme of this unit: distraction. Life today is all about how we can build our days around the screens we are consumed by. In James Williams' Stand Out of Our Light, he discusses the ever-increasing effect of technology on our attention.

His book is mostly broken into three parts. The first part, "Distraction by Design," is mostly an introduction to the limits technology has put on human attention and the increase of self-regulation responsibility it has given to us. Now, more than ever before, we must carefully set boundaries and find new ways to limit our wasteful technology usage so as to not fall behind on our day-to-day duties. By creating endless scrolling capacities, companies have also been given the advantage of increasing capital by using social media like Facebook or Twitter to help increase foot traffic on their sites and get the word out there.

The second part, "Clicks Against Humanity," was his way of showing how detrimental technology can be to our lives (on a sometimes extreme scale). In fact, he discusses the relationship that technology has that can come between us and our true priorities. See, for many people, social media is a way to get likes, follows, connections with people because they can't in real life or they feel unworthy of it behind the screen. However, this presents a painful reward system when we notice that a friend has more likes or views than we do. It can not only harm our view of ourselves, but the competition for who has a "more likable" picture can break friendships as well. It is hard to see others succeed in things we wish we could be good at, but social media has presented us with just the platform to flaunt these successes on.

In his final section, "Freedom of Attention," he makes sure to make his stance clear. He is not here to argue the good vs the bad in technology, he is simply here to argue that "if our technologies are not on our side, then they have no place in our lives." He discusses the attention economy at length and how we feed off of attention to run our society, for if it is not quick and eye-catching, we will simply walk on by.

All of this to say, a lot of this unit has been for self-reflection. Taking time out to measure our screen time and stepping away from the phone as much as we can for self-analysis. 

In fact, 2 years ago, this became a big thing for a lot of influencers as well. (I'm not sure any of them got the idea from Williams' book). Emma Chamberlain, Youtube Vlogger and big social media influencer, did a video on this exact idea: "24 HOURS WITHOUT A PHONE." In her video, she taped her phone in a box, went on to live a normal day, and blogged the whole thing. While she still had screen time on her TV, there were a lot of things she didn't think she would miss. While she talks about how relaxing and good her day felt, she also realized that there were times she wanted her phone for no reason, she realized her music had to come from the radio, she had no way to use a digital map to get from place to place, she couldn't even comfortably go to the restroom without her phone to play on.

It is the trivial day-to-day things that we don't realize require attention until we lose something like our phone to distract us. Our phones provide an escape for us to lose focus and scroll endlessly without a thought in our minds. It is easy to get lost in these escapes. Williams talks about it in his book and Emma even mentions at the end of her video when she gets her phone back that all of her work is done.

Just like Williams says, we have to learn to separate ourselves and set boundaries between us and our screens.

Quality Time with Our Screens

 

"iPhone" by Gonzalo Baeza iPhone | iPhone | Gonzalo Baeza | Flickr

Here’s an honest question: How much attention do you give your phone on a daily basis? 

You don’t have to be exact in terms of time. Just consider it in general. Is it a lot, a little, intermittently, or does it depend on the day? Don’t be afraid to be honest. We all probably have given more attention to our phones than we would like to admit. 

Like I mentioned earlier, you don’t have to be exact, but for the sake of today’s blog post I will be exact.

Above is a picture of my current weekly screen time. My iPhone has reported the exact amount of time in which I have utilized my phone as of March 18th, 2022. Another factor to keep in mind as you view these charts is that I have been on spring break for the past 7 days, so this definitely reflects how much time and what apps I have chosen to use during this break time.

The top seven apps that I used most as of recently, in order from most-used to least-used, include TikTok, Instagram, Safari, Pinterest, Messages, Snapchat, and Google Docs. Based on the top seven apps that I used most I can tell that I have used a lot of my social media apps for entertainment and communication with friends. My Safari and Google Docs app also made it to the list since I have dedicated some time towards getting some school assignments done ahead of time. 

No matter how long you spend on your phone, it can be easily recognized why we would either knowing or unknowingly dedicate so much time to our screen. Many of us use our phones for communication, entertainment, work, photography, payments, etc. There is a lot that these phones of ours allow us to do. And it admittedly helps that our phones are always us at nearly all times. I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t leave our homes without making sure that our phones are with us. 

But there was a time when smartphones weren’t signature items that the majority of people had. Before smartphones there were landlines and flip phones, which were basically supposed to serve the one main goal of communicating with others (Although admittedly flip phones had a few more tools). Needless to say, previous phones were limited in ability compared to current phone models, but we still sustained ourselves just fine with only communicating in the past. 

So how did we get here? How have we suddenly found ourselves in a world of vast digital possibilities, and how have we become so immersed in it?

According to James Williams in his book Stand Out of Our Light, it isn’t entirely our fault that we have become so drawn to our phones. In fact, whether they know it or not, the technological and media manufacturers that contribute to your phone have made it to where they are playing on your willingness to give your attention over to them. As if the shiny, glowing box wasn’t enough to entice you, now you have apps with algorithms that cater to your interests so that you are more likely to look at them. Multiple outlets are throwing more and more distractions at you, competing for your attention.

That is exactly what Williams consistently focuses on in his book: our attention. Attention seems to be the most desired and crucial resource that media personnel want from users. They want you to constantly interact with their content so that you can contribute to their data that reveals what works and what doesn’t work. But Williams also argues that attention is a resource that has been rapidly dwindling out over the years. And this is highly in part to the high-tech devices that we have available to us. 

Williams brings up a point made by economist Herbert Simon. He argues that back in a world that lacked a vast amount of technology, we didn’t have as much of a means to access abundant information. We were limited to what we have available to us, thus, giving us the means to decide what we want to delicate our time and attention to. But now in a time where information is abundant due to technology, there is so much information that seeks attention, but there simply isn't enough attention.

In short: Abundance of information = A scarcity of attention.

By now you might be agreeing that your phone gain much of your attention for a variety of reasons. But you might also simultaneously think that despite this fact, we as beings have grown accustomed to life with smartphones. To live without them almost feels like we’d be deprived of a pivotal tool that we use every day. 

And Williams agrees with you! He agrees that technology can help you complete tasks and achieve goals. But as of right now, it is apparent that our technology has its own goal: to gain your attention. “There’s a deep misalignment between the goals we have for ourselves and the goals our technologies have for us,” wrote Williams. This is something that he suggests we need to adjust in order to fix. It’s time to aim for the goal of bringing the technologies of our attention onto our side.

In order to do this we need to address that we will be an active part in this change. According to Williams, we can’t simply ask for technologies to “rewire” our brains, focus on the damage that the attention economy has done, or place all blame on the designers of technologies themselves. After all, no one goes into that job position with the intent of making lives harder. This has simply been an effect from our situation that we now have to learn how to navigate together. 

Williams suggests that in order to move towards this goal, we should measure a number of factors that can help us to consider how we can readjust how we utilize technology. You might be thinking that our phones already measure a number of aspects about their users already, and you’re correct. I mean, you saw how my phone noted by average screen time over the course of a number of days. And the apps on my phones use cookies to track what I search and what specific content I interact with. Williams instead suggests that we consider “What information about the user are we not measuring, that we have a moral obligation to measure?” 

Some of the suggested factors that he believes we should measure include:

• Potential vulnerabilities

• Williams describes this as us considering the vulnerability that we harbor within us. Think of it as your inner child that still resides in you as an adult. We see it appropriate to regulate material and advertisements when it comes to children, so we should also continue to regulate what the “child within us” sees.

• Understanding of user intent

• Williams explains this as being the consideration of users goals (both higher and lower). By taking into account short-term and long-term goals that a user may have, they can consider what they should consider in their design decisions in order to help them towards their goals. 

• Negative effects that technology can have on a user

• This one is a bit more straightforward. This is all about considering how users are affected in a more concerning light. Whether that be mental health, health issues, distraction rates, etc.

• Broader effects of advertising

• Williams suggests that instead of companies solely focusing on the persuasive goals of their advertisements, they also take into account other factors that occur based on their advertising efforts. 

These are just a few suggestions made by Williams. He believes that although this shift towards a new dynamic between people and technologies seems extreme, that it is possible. But in order for us to make this shift, adjustments need to be made. We must reevaluate how we incorporate technologies into our lives if it is that we wish to align technology with ourselves and our lives.

TIkTok Content: Can It Be Labeled?

 Che La Luna by Louis Prima. Haven't heard of it? That's okay, just go on TikTok! There has been an overwhelming amount of trend-worthy content, both old and new, that utilizes familiar sounds from the past. Looking beyond the past, we see TikTok create new sounds that are apart of popular trends. Some of these sounds keep a lingering placeholder on our minds, and arises as we recall them. Others however, will come and go without much thought to it. 

How can we create defined aspects to these sounds we hear and recollect on TikTok? Raymond Williams has done this for us already by creating four specific practices that can be applied to the essence of TikTok videos and their popularity. 

Raymond Williams, a welsh writer, defines four practices that we can apply to define the specifics to trends we see and remember. 

• Residual: Williams describes this residual concept as pieces that have popularized once before, then faded away from priority of culture, and develops strides toward popularity once again. 

So think of this as the Che La Luna song! This song has had it's popular time period in the 1970's, and would constantly have cameos within movies throughout time. After taking a backseat to our minds, it has once again re-emerged on social media through TikTok! 

This is just one video as an example that uses this song as a TikTok sound. If you can't see it: This TikTok generated over 730,000 likes, and nearly 8 MILLION views... Che La Luna me now please!

• Dominant: Williams expresses this concept that has found popularity right now. This is simply a hit or miss for any trend, but I would consider dominant practices to be the "prime" of a trend; A trend at its best potential for popularity. 

TikTok allows for a tab on its app that gives the trending cycle at the tap of your screen. Essentially, the dominant trends of TikTok are already laid out for a consumer to simply tap and watch endlessly since TikTok is clever enough to leave these dominant topics vague. They're able to apply many videos to a category so a person can scroll for hourssssss without realizing they fell down the rabbit hole. 

• Emergent: This part of residual concepts is what Williams declares as the potential building things. In the TikTok world, these may be the trends or dances that people have created that are finding their sparks across communities on TikTok. Although these specific areas of TikTok haven't struck in regards to popularity and numbers, they are rising to the occasion! 

Quite honestly, this is a hard concept to pinpoint on TikTok. How does one know that they have been a funnel to a popularizing trend/video? Only the creator of a video can truly track it of course, but for a person to know "oh yeah this is so going viral" is hard to gauge, because popularity of a video is pure luck in my opinion. 

• Archaic: These are the pieces of the world that Williams considers outdated. This concepts entails all the old information that has been forgotten and left to the past. Nobody cares for this information unless they are passionate for it, or maybe reminded of its existence. 

This is an easy one to grasp. All the trends of TikTok that were a big thing at their "prime" has faded from the foreground, and taken a backseat for basically forever until they are called upon to our memories for mere moments. Social media, and TikTok in general, have fast moving content that come and go. The digestion of content by consumers is constant, meaning that there isn't one singular piece of trending content sticks at any point. 

From all this, it's good to understand how content on TikTok can be applicable to cultural applications of Raymond Williams. You may be asking what you gain from having the intellect of understanding what content falls under within these concepts. Great question. I think that's up to you to identify the changes in understanding on how you see content from here on out. So have fun with it! 

What to post/how to use Facebook for business

 First identify your goal for Facebook. Is it web traffic? Increased sales? Brand awareness? What ever it is write it down, and begin to track its metrics. Hold up - what are metrics?? Measurable data to keep records. This way you can evaluate your strategies effectiveness. 

First things first. Your content calendar. As you are in this beginning phase, start posting, see what your audience thinks. Begin posting 2-5x a week and go from there.

I like to follow the 80/20 rule. 80% entertainment, engagement, information, and 20% promoting your brand/ business. This way you are not constantly shoving BUY, BUY, BUY down your audiences throat. 

Post ideas-

1.Tutorials

2. Share industry related content

3. Share user generated content ( more on how to gain and collect this later)

4. Post videos 

5. Post clips and links to your blog (if you have one)

6. Share branded content- design thru canvas, animated graphics.

7. Post infographics

8. Announce deals and offers

9. Share content from other accounts

10. Post trending memes, and relate them to your brand.

11. Share product reviews.

12. Post answers to FAQ's.

13. Create a themed series.

Content calendar ideas

Monday- Meet the team

Tuesday- At home easy recipe

Wednesday-  Blog post

Thursday-  infographic 

Friday- Product spotlight ( to warm up those weekend shoppers)

Saturday- Show us Saturday- (to gain UCG)

Sunday-