- 8:30am: Refusing to accept the fact that I can no longer sleep any longer unless I want to be late, I roll over, shut my obnoxious alarm off, and unlock my phone. I go through all of my apps that have a notification and check those first. Usually a bunch of spam email, and then some late night snaps that I missed. I’m very OCD about keeping my phone notification free, so that’s why I go to those first, and then I head to Instagram because it’s so easy to easily scroll through my feed and catch up on all of the pictures I missed while sleeping (cause there’s always so many good Instagram’s at 3:00am?).
- 8:36am: After spending a solid 5-6 minutes catching up on what I missed, I roll out of bed, walk to my bathroom and open Spotify. I move very slow in the morning and I’ve realized that having one of Spotify’s morning playlists play while I get ready jump starts my energy and gets me moving a little quicker. Some people resort to coffee right when they wake up, I resort to Spotify. To each their own, right?
- 9:15am: During my walk to class, I continue flipping through Spotify and queuing up the perfect songs for the mood that I’m in, which, considering it was cloudy and kind of rainy/snowy and the fact that I’m not a morning person (but who is in college?), I was in a “Lumineers” kind of mood.
- 9:26am: As we all sit around waiting for our teacher to arrive, I open up Snapchat to see what’s happened since I last opened it, and again, continuing with the OCD, I’m one of those people that has to clear all of the mystory’s. After tapping through those for a minute, I open up Instagram to check for any new pictures or Instagram stories. I’m not a huge fan of the story aspect on Instagram, but when I’m super bored with nothing else to do, I tap through those, and the first picture I opened up was of guac…see below and I hope you had the same reaction I did.
- 10:47am: Class gets out and me and every other student pull out our phones as we exit the room to catch up, of course. This time I went to Facebook because I had 2 notifications so I cleared those, and then went to home feed to see what memes have been posted and which of my family members had posted pictures because those are typically the only two things that are present on my timeline. Then I tapped through all my mystory’s because, duh, gotta clear them all. But when I say clear them, I do watch them, some more intently than others, but I just need it cleared. Then I went to send a mass snap to all of my friends – a stupid one of me with the new bunny filter on.
- 1:32pm: After running around at work and getting things done for my boss and socializing with my coworkers, socializing without technology I might add, I finally got to check social media. I opened Snapchat to 6 snaps, so naturally I replied to the ones that intended a response, and then swiped right over to mystory’s. Cleared those and headed to my next class.
- 3:16pm: During my 45-minute break between classes, I head to the law library and get some homework done. During this time, I also flip back and forth between homework and Facebook on my laptop because I enjoy looking at Facebook much more on a bigger screen, honestly, not sure why?
- 3:47pm: During my walk to my final class of the day, I open up Snapchat, respond to my friends snaps and then send a snap of my feet walking to class with the caption: “Can I go home now?” and then check out all the mystory’s. I close out of Snapchat after about two minutes and scroll through my Instagram feed, and pausing my scroll every time I look up to 1.) make sure I’m not running into anyone, and 2.) make sure I don’t miss a post.
- 5:30pm: After getting home from class and charging my phone, I check Snapchat, tap through the mystory’s, and send a mass snap to my friends of me under my bed covers with the caption: “dead.” Then I scroll through Instagram, liking a bunch of pictures and tagging my friend Courtney in at least four meme posts.
- 8:15pm: After waking up from my excessively long nap, I do my usual to catch up with what everyone is doing: open Snapchat, look at the snaps from my friends, respond to some, tap through all the mystory’s, exit Snapchat, open Instagram, like a bunch of pictures and tag people in relatable memes, exit Instagram.
- 9:18pm: After watching an episode of Shameless, which is one of those shows where you can’t have any distractions, especially social media, because not only do you need to be paying attention, you want to be paying attention. Yes, it’s that good.
- 7:48am: After realizing how truly tired I was that I fell asleep while watching Shameless (guess I’ll have to watch that episode again), I woke up freaking out, thinking that I had somewhere to be. Nope. It’s Friday. No class, no work, no responsibilities. But since I was up and my heart was racing too fast for me to go back to sleep right away, I opened Facebook to clear the three notifications that I had. Then I opened Snapchat and looked at the 4 snaps that my friends had sent me, and then looked through all of the mystory’s of my friends out and about, while I was sleeping…not sorry or mad about it. Sleep > everything else. Below is one of the snaps that my friend had sent me from earlier that morning when she was going to work. I hope you at least get a small chuckle out of it because I certainly did.
After completing the 24-hour social media diary, I began to realize that I subconsciously didn’t go on social media as much as I usually do and I think that was because I was being self-monitored. I think that part of me didn’t want to actually realize and admit to myself how dependent I am on social media, especially in regards to keeping up with everyone.
As a millennial, I will happily admit that I am extremely dependent on social media, sometimes almost too dependent. Although we have texting and calling, social media just creates such a unique and fun way to communicate with people. My personal favorite is Snapchat. As stated earlier, I was subconsciously trying to avoid being so active on the platforms, but normally, I am snapping where I am and what I’m doing all the time to my top 10 best friends on Snapchat, and usually will add it to my own mystory as well.
I’ve been asked the following question on many occasions: How would your life be different without social media? And honestly, my answer is the same every time – I have no idea. I grew up through this excitement and obsession with technology and I fell very deep into it all. So, because I grew into this lifestyle, it all seems so normal for me, so without it, I truly have no idea how my life would be different, other than the fact that I know I wouldn’t enjoy it.
•molly gaughan• 