DIGITAL IDENTITY 2013: Tracking my social media use: My discoveries

The assignment said to track our social media use for 48 hours. Therefore my use of internet is not all tracked. When I searched Google, read the news, watched series or movies among other internet activities it wasn’t tracked.
I tracked my use of social media; Facebook (Julie Danielsen), Instagram (juliedanielsen_), Twitter (@JigsawJulie) and Snapchat. I also decided to track my use of school related social media; My blog, PB-works (the platform we use on my Digital Identities class), pages-tdm.au.dk (the platform we use for my Business- and crisis communications class) and AULA (the platform we use for my Digital Economy class). Furthermore I decided to include my Hotmail account as I also communicate with other people via mail.

In the tracking period (48 hours and 20 minutes) I was online on social media for 3 hours, 11 minutes and 8 seconds with a total amount of 115 entries. This means I logged on at an average of 2,37 times an hour and spent a total amount of 6,5% of my time on social media. I was actually surprised that it wasn’t more. However I did notice, that as the day went by, and I got a little exhausted by the entire note taking, my use of social media decreased. I’m certain that I, even though I wasn’t aware of this, subconsciously failed to log on my social media accounts in the evenings due to my getting sick and tired of doing the notes. Normally I find that I in the evening often watch TV and engage in social media at the same time, and therefore the lack of engaging in social media in the evening makes me wonder. However this was also Cut Cancer week on TV2, and they had a lot of documentaries about people with cancer, that required and captured my attention more than the other programs I usually watch, e.g. Robinson. Only 8% of my engaging in social media was school related. This number probably ought to be higher, but I comfort myself with the fact that I didn’t really expected anything to happen on the school related social media sites in my tracking period.

Facebook was my favourite social media. 53 out of 115 entries (43%) were on this media. I kind of knew this already. However a lot of the activity on Facebook is Facebook messenger, which I use to communicate with my classmates and friends. Most of the other social media platforms came in rather close. I used Hotmail 20 times, Instagram 16 times, Snapchat 12 times. I only used Twitter 6 times, which isn't surprising - I'm still trying to figure out if that media is for me.

I found that my engaging in social media occurred at all times and places. Once during the 48 hours I logged on in my bed during the night after I went to the bathroom to pee. Most of my engaging on social media was done on my iPhone (87%). I carry my phone with me everywhere – and I truly mean everywhere. Thus 7% of my engaging on social media occurred in my bathroom. As I share an apartment with two others, I spend a lot of my time in my room, both when studying and when watching TV. This is also reflected on where I am when I engage in social media – 59% was done in my bed.

I thought that doing this assignment was really fun. I discovered some things about my social media use, that I never considered before. This assignment made me think about how, when and why I use social media. I was very surprised that I logged on during the night once. I did this without even thinking, meaning that it probably wasn’t the first time. I just never gave it much thought before.

I recommend everybody to try tracking your social media use – I’m sure you’ll be surprised.

Screenshots from my social media use during the 48 hour tracking: