Media Diet

Saturday:
5 hours - tv, movies
3 hours - Internet
Facebook - 30 minutes
Email - 30 minutes
Stumbleupon - 2 hour
45 minutes - phone calls, texting
Sunday:
30 minutes - Internet (browsing - email, facebook (4 minutes), weather, scu.edu)
3 hours - Internet (Homework related)
30 minutes  - phone calls, texting
45 minutes - Superbowl
45 minutes - Music/iTunes/downloading music 
1 hour - TV/channel flipping
1 hour - iPod
1 hour - StumbleUpon
Monday:
30 minutes - Internet (browsing - check email, facebook, weather, blog)
1.5 hours - iPod
1 hour - Tv - Family Guy, The Office
Tuesday:
30 minutes - Email
20 minutes - Facebook
1.5 hours - iPod
3 hours - Internet (angel, school related)
2 hours - TV
Wednesday:
45 minutes - Internet (check email, facebook, weather, blog)
1 hour - StumbleUpon
2 hours - movie
1 hour - iPod
3 hours - Internet (homework)
Thursday:
30 minutes - Internet (browsing - check email, facebook, weather, blog)
3 hours - tv
2 hours - Movie
1.5 hours - Ipod

After keeping a media diet for a few days, a clear pattern was revealed in my daily media usage. I expected similar results as what I received and find these relatively similar to fellow students blogs on personal media diets. In general, I believe my media diet reflects a female 20-something college student with high-quality access to the internet, sometimes having a bit too much free time on her hands. During the school week, I noticed my media diet and what particular forms of media I was engaging in differed depending on amounts of school work and class requirements. Having full access to the internet on a daily basis, I engage in a large amount of “playing seriously”. I spend enough time browsing and interacting with different websites depending on my class schedule and what is due a current day, while I also have ample time to freely roam the web. Days focused more on school work, such as Sunday, my media usage was more productive and task oriented. In my spare time, after classes are over, mostly during the evening weekday hours, I would use the internet for browsing and surfing the web, particularly through my dear friend “StumbleUpon”. Looking at Saturday, the day of the week I claim to be “free day” lacking any school oriented work or engagement, my media intake shifted to more fun and light internet sights and more browsing on facebook, while still remaining a big part of my daily life.   
    Having done a similar media diet tasks in past classes, I do note some changes in my media intake due to my access to such media and its impact on my media intake in the future. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, my home had high-quality access to the internet and it never seemed to cross my mind that this was not necessarily the norm. Such intake, particularly in reference to my internet usage, quickly led my attention to social networks, specifically facebook. I would spend countless hours browsing and clicking on facebook things, using it as a tool of procrastination. Up until the last 2 summers, I pretty much always had the internet at my fingertips. Living in Cape Cod with friends the past two summers, I experienced my first period of no cable and no internet. It was the first time I was confronted with two things which took up so much time in my life to disappear, and as a result, my daily routine changed dramatically. No longer did I have the ability to plop down, open my laptop and click away, and quickly, in fact, much faster than I thought, my interest in both cable and internet and particularly facebook drained. I no longer cared about facebook clicking or watching tv and I have to say, its effects were really beneficial and led too more face-to-face interaction and closer friendships. When September rolled around and my high-quality access life resumed, I found myself incredibly less interested certain sites which once ruled a part of my life style. While my media intake quickly returned to a large number of hours per day, my interest and consumption shifted. Still I see a pattern in how I spend my leisure time as being consumed by media, however, I do find it interesting how drastically different I spend my leisure time in low verse high quality internet access homes.
    My media diet, I believe, is a pretty good reflection of my daily activities. Clear patterns were illuminated to me in what I media I used and when I used it. The mornings consist of about 30 minutes of “updating” myself, (ie, email, facebook, weather.com, cnn.com, finishing up homework), and afternoons are filled with school related media intake and evenings are subject to more leisure media usage such as tv browsing or listening to music. As an art history/photo major, I use my computer always for Art History class notes and digital photography projects. As our technology class uses the internet a lot for class discussion posts and blogging, and my other two classes are Art History and Photo, my media consumption is greater than if I had  another schedule, in fact, I have spent more time this quarter on my computer than ever before. I also have realized that I am incredibly reliant on my iPod for almost all of my daily activities. I have always loved music and it has been a hobby of mine, hence, a great deal of my time, while sporadic throughout the day, is plugged into my ipod
      We rely so much on technology as a part of our lives today, that my media diet did not come as quite a shock. I feel my media usage is relevant to my daily schedule and demands, however, technology has a clear role in my life. Without high-quality access to such media on a daily basis, I would find myself, as a college student, at a great disadvantage as so much of my media intake is in context to school demands. I definitely use media as my main intake during times of leisure, whether it be StumbleUpon or watching another Family Guy episode, technology plays a huge role in my daily life.