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Data Collection – Nevaeh Hoyte

The data I decided to analyze was my screen time for messaging and instagram. I chose these two applications because these are the two things I check every day. I usually check my messages because it’s where I talk to my friends and parents constantly. Instagram I’m usually looking at different outfit ideas and finding different places to shop. If not, I’m advertising for my friends’ brands, something I’ve been doing a lot recently. 

If I showed someone my data without telling them anything else about me they would assume I’m a very social person. Based on the amount of time I spend on messaging shows I text a lot. They would think about whether or not it’s one person I’m talking to or a group of different people I’m talking to.  The assumption of me being a social person is true, I talk to different people every day. I’m usually texting 5 or more people within the hour. Based on my screen time for instagram someone could assume I just scroll through my timeline all day. This assumption would be false because I’m not just scrolling and looking at people’s photos. Instagram is where I get most of my outfit ideas from. It’s also where I found most of the places I shop at now from.  

What I noticed about my screen time is that it’s very inconsistent. I looked back on previous weeks and noticed the the weekly hours were so different. For example: october 20 – october 27: 4 hours and 46 minutes; october 27 – november 3: 11 hours and 49 minutes; november 3 – november 9: 9 hours and 53 minutes. I went from 4 hours to 11 to 9 in the matter of just 3 weeks. The reason for this is that sometimes I just don’t use my phone. I avoid being involved in anything social. It’s not really intentional, it’s more of a mood I fall into every once in awhile. I just don’t want to talk to anyone with the exception of a few.

For the most part, I am on my messaging app more than I am on any other app including instagram. As shown in my data table below, you’ll see the difference between my screen time for instagram and messaging on some days are very close and on others very different. For example, Thursday, November 7 my screen time for instagram was 1 hour and 38 minutes and for messaging it was 3 hours and 35 minutes. Thursday I had to have been texting for more time than I usually do.

In conclusion, I want to try and limit my time on these apps and bring my weekly average down to at least 7 hours. Being off of the phone helps take a break from everything that goes on every day. If people let social media consume themselves, they’ll start to form unhealthy habits. 

DATA

 

weekly average : 9 hours, 45 mins

                                                        instagram                             messaging 

sunday, november 3                      58 minutes                           50 minutes 

monday, november 4                    48 minutes                       1 hour, 9 minutes

tuesday, november 5                 1 hour, 51 minutes             1 hour, 53 minutes

wednesday, november 6           1 hour, 3 minutes                       48 minutes

thursday, november 7               1 hour, 38 minutes                3 hours, 35 minutes

friday, november 8                     1 hour, 6 minutes                  1 hour, 36 minutes

saturday, november 9               2 hours, 4 minutes                1 hour, 23 minutes

 

Data Collection (Noah Fischer)

For my data collection I decided to track the amount of steps I take for a week. On the iPhone there is the health app that tracks everything that is related to your health from steps to the amount of flights climbed in a day. Walking is an everyday thing, and I was curious on how many steps I actually take throughout the week. 

If Someone was to look at my data, they can probably assume that I don’t really do crazy amounts of walking during the week, except for a few occasions. They can also jump to a conclusion that I don’t have school two days of the week and during those two days I’m just relaxing and enjoying my day off.

    The three days that probably grabs the person’s attention are Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Friday and Saturday are the lowest because those two days would be the days I don’t have school, and I prefer to stay home, especially in this weather. But Thursday November 7th was the highest because those were one of those days with the occasional “adventure” with my friends after school.

    During the week of tracking my data, I only had three days with more than 10,000 steps. Thursday, November 7th was when I went to the city after class with my friends and totaled about 21,000 steps. The next day that is high in steps was on Monday the 11th where I had around 15,000 steps because once again I also went to the city with my friends. Wednesday was a total of 11,500 steps because I had went to work, the building I work at is about a mile walk there and back from the nearest train station.

I chose to track my steps because growing up I always tried to track my steps with those pedometers. I would always end up cheating and shaking the tracker to make it seem like I walked way more than I actually did, it was just a force of habit that I couldn’t seem to control. But with the technology we have in our phones, we can track more than just our steps in a day, but for the week,the month and the year. It also tracks the amount of miles we walked and how many flights of stairs we have climbed throughout the day. This may seem like small details but they are surprising when you actually take a look and find out information that you weren’t even expecting.

According to the app, I took an average of 11,166 steps in the week of Nov 7-13. I average almost the same amount of steps this week as I did last week, so far this month I’m averaging fewer steps than I did last month by around 650 steps per day and I’m already averaging more steps per day this year than I did last year. Collecting this data was actually very fun and easy, I learned a lot of new things that I didn’t even know. It was so easy to track and access this data that I will still continue to keep track of the data to see if there are any big changes in my routine.

Bridget’s Mini-Project Data Collection: Time Spent on Instagram

I made my project about how much time I spend on Instagram daily. I’m normally on my phone during my free time; when it comes to riding the train, walking home, going to school, getting out of awkward situations, or just when I’m bored. I always feel like I stay on my phone for hours just looking and browsing memes. I know I’ve been on my phone for way too long when I keep refreshing the page to see new posts and the same things that I saw come up. I got Instagram when I was in 8th grade (5-6 years ago). It was the newest popular thing but it wasn’t really as appealing due to people mainly using it to post pictures/videos. I started getting more into it when Vine came out and people started posting their funny content on Instagram. Instagram has widened worldwide and is used for so many different things (advertising, selling, becoming an “influencer”, posting funny content/memes, a safe space for some, posting about your opinions about things you care about or don’t care about). It has a wide variety of things to look at and adjusts to your preferences by collecting data about your activity over the years; it’s hard not to get hooked on for hours.

Based on my week’s worth of data collection, I found out that I spend about 5 hours and 24 minutes on Instagram on average daily. On my average weekday, I spent 1 hour on Instagram on the train on my way to school. In school, I spent, on average, 24 minutes on my phone since I only have 2 classes on average each day. I spent 1 hour of my time on Instagram on the way back home. I spent about 2 hours on Instagram at home since I didn’t really have anything to do. I go to work and I usually don’t use my phone the whole time because I like listening to music on my way there and I’m not allowed to use my phone while I’m working. I also listen to music on my way home just to chill and relax after a stressful workday. Once I get home, I spend about an hour on Instagram just so I can procrastinate on doing homework. I figured out that I mostly use Instagram when I’m bored or I have nothing to do; it’s just a distraction. 

I believe that if I showed my data to someone else, they would think that I don’t do much. Almost five hours and a half on Instagram are so much time wasted, I would understand their judgment completely because it’s somewhat true. Like I do stay busy but sometimes you just wanna laugh or not be bored and bring some excitement into your life. They must also think that I enjoy being on social media a lot since I waste a lot of my time on it. If I saw that, I would think that I was one of those people who are constantly on Instagram trying to get the most likes, or someone trying too hard to become an “influencer”. I’m personally not like that, I just go there to laugh, see stupid things, and get informed about stuff here and there. 

After analyzing my data, I figured out that I spend too much time on Instagram. It made me realize that I should cut down on how much time I spend on my phone/Instagram because most of the time its to get out of doing homework and/or distracting myself. I could put that time to better usage, such as, completing homework ahead of time, studying, and running errands. If I cut down on my phone usage, 80% of my problems would probably be solved. I enjoyed this project because it made me more self-aware of what I do the most and how I spend my time.

Data Collection (America Rivera)


For my data collection, I collected the time I spend on social media within one week. Thanks to my iphone, I am always told my screen time for every week and day. More specifically im told how long I spend on each app. The two social media platforms I tend to use most are snapchat and instagram. I went on my phone to track how long I spend on ot these apps within one week to analyze what days I use them most and why.

If someone were to just take a glance at my data, they will probably assume I rely on social media a lot for the main reason that there is at least one minute every day of the week spent on both these apps. Some other guesses may be that im barely on my phone on tuesdays or that i’m just the busiest this day for the main reason that tuesdays have the lowest amount of time being spent on these apps. Also, some may guess that I prefer instagram over snapchat because I spent more time on instagram this week than Snapchat. Is this really true? No, the only reason why I spent so much more time on instagram tis week was because this was the week I dyed my hair, so Instagram gave me more ideas. Usually or mostly always, I use snapchat way more. I don’t really use instagram because I don’t really bother about what other people post, and on snapchat is where I communicate with my friends.

If someone takes the guess that i’m busiest on tuesdays, they are correct. I am barely on either app or on my phone this day for the main reason that i’m in school all day from 12pm to 7pm. Tuesdays are different than thursdays because I have lab on tuesdays. When I have lab it means that after my first class ends at 1:40pm, I only have community hour then lab and Thursdays I have a 3 hour break until my 4:30 class. This explains why I have no time to be on social media tuesdays. I usually just eat during the hour and a half break I have, or print out my labs.

It was not hard at all collecting data for this project because my phone does it automatically. I really don’t know if I can turn off a screen time tracker or not. Looking at my data, I tend to be on social media the most on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The reason for these results are because on Sundays I usually take the day to relax for myself since I know I have school the next day, then mondays and wednesdays would be because I finish all my classes by 10:40am. Lastly, fridays reason would be because I don’t have school fridays so im free to get distracted. Adding on to my data analysis, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I spend the least time on either app because im in school all day and on Saturdays, I usually spend this day with family.

Finally, the assumption that I rely on social media a lot is mostly false. I try not to use social media as much just because I don’t care about what other people are doing. The only times I really look at other people’s posts or stories might be when im really bored, other than that it doesn’t interest me. Also, although I don’t rely on social media to make my day, I do rely on it when it comes to contacting friends and people. Snapchat and Instagram are two of the easiest ways to contact my friends even if I have their numbers. I believe this is a true fact because people are usually on social media meaning they will see my message much quicker while they’re on snapchat or instagram. Finally one very important point is that I don’t look at my feed when using instagram, I look at the explore page for the main reason that I don’t really care about what other post unless its creative. I usually just look at funny videos, skincare, or softball videos on the explore page.

Data:

Overall screen time in a week is about 8 hours and 14 minutes Snapchat
(3 hours and 9 minutes in a week) 		Instagram
(4 hours and 53 minutes in a week)
Sunday44 minutes1 hour and 6 minutes
Monday25 minutes52 minutes
Tuesday14 minutes3 minutes
Wednesday33 minutes56 minutes
Thursday24 minutes7 minutes
Friday9 minutes1 hour and 10 minutes
Saturday37 minutes37 minutes

Olivia’s “Our Data” Reflection

We ended up talking about Facebook and its categories in my evening graduate seminar too, so I looked at my own Facebook data, and thought I should do the same reflection assignment that I asked you to do.

What did I find?

Some stuff that was not surprising: Facebook’s top category for me is “away from hometown,” they know I work in education, they know I’m a government employee, they know I’m a frequent traveler, they know I use Facebook on mobile a lot but also on wifi, they know I’m a commuter. (That means they notice I access Facebook in regular location-based patterns on weekdays!) They know my political views (ish)

The thing that was most surprising: One of the categories they have me in is “Friends of Soccer Fans.” There’s a whole advertising category just for people who are “top 2 friends” of people who display a deep interest in soccer. Why is that even a category??? Two of my cousins are big into soccer, and neither uses Facebook very much, so I assume it’s one of them. Also they know what model phone I have and that I fairly recently changed mobile networks. Also “birthday in October” is one of their ad categories– I’m not sure what they would advertise to me differently based on that.

What is accurate, what is not accurate? Everything was accurate except perhaps two things. There is a category called “Multicultural Affinity: African American.” If that means they think I’m Black, they’re wrong, but if they just think I display an above-average interest in African American issues, I suppose that’s probably true, I do try to be aware.
They also marked me as Top 5% and Top 10% of richest zipcodes, which is wrong. I am far away from the top 5 or 10% of richest people, but I Googled which zipcodes are the richest, and it seems that I’m in these categories because they know I live in New York, but their algorithms don’t know where I live, just where I spend a lot of my time (in midtown! Which is pretty rich!)

What changes to my privacy settings? None to my privacy settings, but I am going to remove more of my “liked” pages that I liked when I was like 13 and wanted to Like every page.

I think what I think the advantages and disadvantages are about this should be pretty clear to you by now.

Class 11/11

Finding Your Data

Click on the links below for directions on how to view your data on each site.

Google: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/all-the-data-google-has-on-you

Google ads specifically: https://gizmodo.com/find-out-what-google-thinks-you-want-to-see-in-ads-and-1677941497

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992?helpref=hc_global_nav

Facebook ad preferences specifically: https://www.facebook.com/help/247395082112892

Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/181231772500920

Apple: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/find-out-what-data-apple-has-on-you/

If you have another site you want to look at, let me know and I can find directions for you!

Analyzing Your Data

During class or after class for homework, write up answers to the following questions (and email them to me or post them to the blog):

  1. What did you find about yourself? 
  2. What surprised you?
  3. What was accurate, and what was not accurate?
  4. What changes do you want to make to your privacy settings, if any?
  5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of websites keeping this data on you?