“Dear Data” is a unique blend of data visualization and personal storytelling. At its core, it’s about humanizing data by turning the moments of our daily lives into insightful visual narratives. My last “Dear Data” project delved into my digital content consumption, spanning from YouTube to Netflix. My new “Dear Data” is focused on my phone usage or mobile screen time. I collected data with the following questions in mind:
- How much time am I spending on my phone every day?
- What mobile apps am I using the most?
- How long do I spend on each app?
- What are my top app categories?
As expected, my findings revealed that a significant chunk of my day is spent on my phone. The following is a structured table on my mobile screen time:
As you can see, my average daily mobile screen time was roughly 10 hours. Most of this was spent on social and video apps with Instagram, YouTube, and Discord as my most used.
Dear Data: A Week of Mobile Screen Time
Last time, I was inspired by A Week of Media and tried a similar approach. For this new one, I was inspired by A Week of Apologies. I wanted to tried something different this time, away from a sort of plant visual, but I honestly couldn’t think of anything other than this as I was more focused on writing my data narrative. However, I do think the following data visual accurately represents my screen time. The height of each plant is based on my total daily mobile screen time in hours and each leaf is outlined based on the app category with each color representing a specific app within that category. I know it’s hard to see the leaf outline but social = pink, video = red, and games = purple. Here is my data visual:
As I said earlier, the most visible insight is that most of my day is spent on my phone. I knew my total daily screen time would be high but I didn’t know it would be this much. Based on what I know about myself and my current findings, I definitely need to undergo a digital detox from my phone. Other trends I noticed are that every day, I spent a time on Instagram, YouTube, and Discord. While Instagram leans more toward an almost unbreakable habit of checking and scrolling, it also includes discovering cute animal videos, talking with friends, keeping up with news and information. I would say that I need to maybe balance or control the bad habit of constantly checking and endlessly scrolling but am also aware that it’s not all bad. YouTube is similar as I really enjoy listening to or watching creative content as the idea of content creation inspires me. I don’t necessarily see an issue with this one because I mostly use it as background noise. Last but not least, Discord is a social platform designed primarily for creating online communities. My daily use of Discord is due to this, as I am active in a community server for a channel that reacts and reviews to media. As long as this doesn’t interfere with my in-person interactions, which it doesn’t, I don’t necessarily see an issue with this one either as it allows me to socialize with others in a community with similar interests as me.