- I think that addicted is a strong word in general. I use my phone a lot, but if I wanted to I could go without it for a time. When I was a sophomore in high school, I dropped my phone into the ocean and it was swept away by the tide. However, I was on a school trip and my parents weren’t there, so I spent the rest of the trip without a phone. As far as I can remember, it didn’t change my state of mind at all. Social media on the other hand is a bit more addictive. Specifically, I find it hard to keep my mind off of responding to people as soon as they message me. I can be a bit obsessive about responding in a timely manner.
2. The three primary benefits I get from using my phone are pretty simple. First and foremost, its a way to stay connected to people I care about from far away. This kind of rapid communication is key to a busy social life. Secondly, there is an entertainment value I get from my phone. Be it social media, games or mobile streaming my phone always gives me something to do. You could argue that this has led to a constant need to be doing something, but all in all it’s fine. Finally, my phone allows me to take work with me anywhere. This is only really useful in college, but it helps to be able to email professors or attend class from anywhere.
3. In all honesty, I don’t know that there are three negative effects I could come up with. As I mentioned earlier, I think my phone has given me the need to constantly be doing something, whether I’m scrolling through social media or playing games. Aside from that, it may have decreased my attention span. I frequently get distracted by my phone and struggle to hold my attention on something else. Other than those two, however, I can’t seem to think of a third thing.
My most recent post on Instagram received only 41 likes, which is relatively low for me, but this was most disappointing because the post was about women’s rights, so for that to be lower than the others was sort of disappointing. My other two posts had just under 100 likes. One was a post for my birthday and the other was for my cat that had died. I didn’t feel any strong emotions related to these posts. I don’t get any real excitement from likes and only get disappointed if they are exceedingly low. It’s sort of a lose-lose situation, because high amounts of likes don’t thrill me, but low ones do hurt. That’s why I don’t really post on Instagram very often.
Overall, tracking my usage was sort of exactly as expected. I track my usage pretty often as it is, so this assignment was par for the course for me. I don’t really think I fall at either of the extremes. I am not overly attached to my phone, but I am not completely detached from it either. I am simply a phone user. I like my phone, and I wouldn’t choose to stop using it, but I could if I lost it or it broke. However, that being said, I don’t like not having it on me. That does start to make me a little nervous. So, maybe I am not objective enough to call out my usage.
Spilling the Tea 