My Media Diet

I began my self-examination of my media diet on a Saturday, so as to include both the weekend and the days of the week. The differences in media consumption between these two times was much different than I initially anticipated.

Over the weekend, I found, not surprisingly, that I consumed more media than I did on school days. In general, I would check my phone every hour or so for text messages or new e-mails. If I found myself away from home, this would increase in frequency to me checking it every 10-20 minutes. In regards to checking Facebook, I would only do that every two hours. On the weekends, I prefer to watch movies instead of television programs. My preferred method of watching movies is streaming them onto my television via my Nintendo Wii (which finally found a use) and Netflix's instant watch feature. All of this makes my life seem far too recreational, so I will also mention that each day, I would do anywhere from one to two hours of homework (depending on my planned daily workload) and an hour of class readings. These two factors remained consistent when the new week began.

My media consumption over the week is drastically shaped by my two long breaks I have on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The first of these breaks is an hour and thirty minutes; the second is two hours and thirty minutes. It would be foolish of me to not utilize most of this time for class readings and homework. Often though, I am able to use some of that time to take advantage of the various features of my phone. If my time is limited in these cases, I usually just read a few articles on the BBC World News. If, however, I find myself finished with the daily news and still unoccupied, I will watch a television episode on my phone. When I get home, my first priority is to finish the day's work, if there is any left. After that, I spend anywhere from one to four hours on either Facebook or watching television episodes on Netflix or Hulu.

Relative to others my age, I don't feel that my media diet is too heavy. I feel the most interest aspect of it is that it truly demonstrates technological convergence. In the last week, I only watched one normal television program, and I only did that because this particular program takes a week to post new episodes on Hulu. I do still find the television useful for streaming the Netflix instant watch feature, but it isn't anything that I can't do on my computer. I also don't have a land line, so almost all of my media consumption is through two devices: my cell phone and my computer. If I were to make any changes to my media diet, it would be to perhaps put a bit more priority on reading current news.