My social media use

As posted on my blog a couple of weeks ago, I had a period where I was left with a dumbphone, since my smartphone was off for repair, this meant no internet-connectivity or social media apps whatsoever. This period made think about my daily use of social media, and how they affect my daily and social life. I therefore decided to cut down on my social media use, and try to be more aware of my surroundings, trying to push the urge for checking the different media, to the back of my head. This experience, and the following thoughts have obviously influenced my media use in the past weeks, and naturally the amount of data gathered in my 48 hour tracking period. Nonetheless I have been tracking myself for 48 consecutive hours during a weekend, trying to note down every single encounter with social media, how long it lasted, on which platform it happened and very important; the purpose.

After looking through the small notes I made, and watching the screen capture of my social media routine, I’ve come to different discoveries regarding my social media use. The following section contains some of my observations and my thoughts regarding what happened and why, presenting a type of overview on observations, along with a reflection on my social media use.

When I look through the notes I find it quite obvious that the tracking happened during a weekend, where my use of social media is somewhat different from my use on a daily basis. I have more time to do the stuff I want, which is reflected in my visit to a lot of different forums, where I gather different types of knowledge not connected to my education, but instead to the things I’m interested in such as; cars, games, mobile phones and soccer. Counting the different encounters, I can see that I have visited four different forums (two of them several times), in a total of three hours. In this time I have only posted twice, but been reading countless of threads. Some of these threads have a lot of discussing going on, making me check them regularly for updates, just to keep myself informed. The more ‘traditional’/popular social media as Facebook and Twitter are checked a couple of times a day, not really with a particular purpose, but just to either make me feel updated on the people I know, or to kill time going to the bathroom or waiting on my girlfriend while she tries out new clothes in, what seems like, every single shop in Aarhus. Only one time did I go to Facebook with a real purpose; to coordinate with my BookClub on the readings, everything else I’ve noted down, seems to be ‘stuffing’ throughout my day.
What surprises me the most, is that I’m really passive in my social media use! I love reading and keeping up with a lot of different things and people, but I’m not contributing with anything myself. During the 48 hours I threw in a single ‘Like’ on Facebook and favorited one tweet, the rest of my time on these medias was just information gathering, and from my point of view, my feed is really not that interesting! I seems like my use of social media is more of a keeping up with the world around me, and the feeling that I don’t wan to miss out on everything, I want to know what is happening, and not too late, to feel left out. Until recently I wouldn’t have been able to categorize myself and my use, but after reading most of Howard Rheingold’s; Smart Mobs, I’ve found out, that I’m a ‘free-rider’. This means I want all the benefits, but I am not providing anything in return. I really don’t see myself as such a kind of person, but my use and data speaks for itself, this is what I am in the virtual world.

There is not a long time until we are doing the social media fast, but to me, it would sound more interesting, if it was the opposite! – If I was forced to contribute, and take part in the social medias I use. By forcing myself to find things interesting enough to be ‘shareable’ and make decisions about which would do me and my social network the most good, would, I think, change my view and use of social media.