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.