Losing Time: How do you spend your hour
On an average day, I spend four to five hours on my phone. Every week I spend 3 hours and four minutes on Productivity and finance applications. I also spent, on average, a total of two hours playing gaming apps on my phone. But the stat that surprised me the most was the 10hrs I spent last week on social media apps such as Snapchat, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
Out of all the social media apps I use, Snapchat consistently maintains my attention. It’s only five days into the week, and I have used Snapchat for one hour and five minutes a day, equaling about five hours and thirty minutes with two days left to go in the week. My second most popular social app on my phone is Instagram, and I spend a daily average of 20 minutes on the app. Other apps like YouTube, Facebook, and twitter I check daily, but I spend less than 15 minutes on those apps each day.
I think I spend so much time on Snapchat due to algorithms from within the app designed to hold my attention and keep me constantly checking the app. A more straightforward reason I spend so much time on Snapchat is that I promote my projects, engage with friends, and take amazing photos. Snapchat also is continuously improving its software but, at the same time, making sure it provides a fun, user-friendly experience for all its users.
Apps like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are great apps, as well. I don’t spend as much time on these apps as I do Snapchat because those apps overall aren’t as fun. I post and read another post on apps like Instagram and Twitter. While I casually promote on those platforms, I mainly use those apps to keep in touch with family and friends’ whole lives out of town. As for YouTube, well, YouTube is the new cable tv. Often when my girlfriend and I sit down to enjoy a meal, we also watch YouTube videos.
In conclusion, I need to scale back on the number of hours I spend on Snapchat each day and, cut one or two forms of social media out of my daily routine completely. I realize that these apps were designed to steal and maintain our attention and then sell that attention to advertisers for a lot of money. At this point, I don’t know if we’re the ones using the apps, or are the apps the ones using us?