I haven’t posted since September 3rd. What have I been up to since then? I have been looking for the best ways to monitor my media usage. I chose to monitor my smartphone usage because my pocket computer lies at the helm of my daily media usage. However, because I am a devoted iPhone user, tracking my media use became tricky. iOS does not allow developers to release applications that look into your application usage data for maintaining privacy. So, I was tasked with discovering workarounds, and I finally believe that I have found it.
Moment
In order to monitor my usage on my iPhone, I used several applications. One of which is Moment. Moment for iOS allows users to track how much they use their phone each day. The $4.99 application attempts to track how many times you pick up your iPhone each day, where you go each day, and have those locations and usage plotted on a map. The app can be really eye opening. From my use, the app seemed to portray accurate information. This isn’t the most accurate way to track your phone usage, however. There were times when I force quit the app to preserve battery, and when I forgot to resume the app’s tracking manually afterwards. However, generally, the app shows shocking details about how much time I actually spend each day on my iPhone.
MyDataManager
The second application I used to track my phone use is MyDataManager. The free application is a convenient tool to track data usage. It tracks both WiFi and cellular data consumption using easy to understand visualizations, allowing me to take a glimpse into my cell phone usage. In fact, during the middle of the month, when I started my smartphone tracking, T-Mobile had recently slowed down my data for exceeding my monthly allowance of 3 GB of data. I knew that tracking my data usage would be effective in painting an overall picture of how much I use my phone daily.
I know for a fact that the majority of applications on my smartphone rely on data, and thus, to complement this application, I manually wrote down the applications I used every morning before school started. I will post the common denominators from the week. This list describes the applications that I rely on the most from my smartphone, and not surprisingly, the majority of them require data use.
Lastly, I requested my beautiful girlfriend to watch me discreetly while I used my smartphone around her, and take notes on how long I used my phone, what applications she noticed me using, and my reactions / facial expressions while I perused my smartphone.
These applications and notes allowed me to keep track of my media usage and present a proposition to take a media diet. How exactly will I partake in a media diet? Keep reading to find out!
New Media Diet: A Reflection on Technology & Me 