My Media Diet

The week of May 14^th to 18^th

Monday:

Computer – at least 7 hours

Studied for Management 80 midterm using powerpoints for at least 4 hours. Another hour of watching Fringe on Hulu. Last few hours spend on programming homework.

Television – at least half an hour

Browsing the food channel and the travel channel.

Reading – roughly 3 hour

Going through chapters for management 80 test simultaneously with computer use.

Tuesday:

Computer – at least 7 hours

Studying for Buddhism for 4 hours. 

Television – at least half an hour

Browsing travel channel and Animal planet.

Reading – roughly 2 hours

Reading Buddhism for test and statistics for test.

Wednesday:

Computer – at least 7 hours

Debugging programming homework for 3 hours. Played League of Legends for 3 hours. Went on youtube to look at videos and surfed Facebook.

Television – at least half an hour

Animal planet.

Thursday:

Computer – roughly 8 hours

Went on youtube to watch random videos of adorable animals. Watched Modern Family and Outsourced on Youtube. Wrote a computer program in C for OMIS 30 which took up roughly 5 hours. Played league of legends at night for at least 3 hours.

Television – at least half an hour

Travel Channel Bizarre Foods

Friday:

Computer – less than 5 hours

Watched Hulu and caught up on shows like Bones and House. Surfed the web and chatted with friends. Watching Hulu probably took up a good 4 hours. The last hour was periodic checking of Facebook and chatting.

Television – at least half an hour

Random Asian dramas.

I am definitely ashamed that the only reading that I do is for if I need to take a test the next day or for class. I wish I had more time for just recreational reading. From my media diet, you can see that the websites such as Hulu have decreased the importance of television in my life.

I think my media diet is like any other college student except for the decrease of Facebook use or sites such as myspace or blogger. The normal college teen does not have the time to sit in front of a television on most nights to watch. What everyone also has in common is some for of chatting going on simultaneously while doing homework or studying for a test. I think we are all guilty of believing we are great at multitasking.

As a society, I believe we are moving towards watching things online. We read actual books less and less. We are more accustomed to digital versions that are not susceptible to weather or spillage. Living in the Silicon Valley is much different than living anywhere else in the world. We try to get the newest gadgets and best technology. People here are very tech savvy. And being one of the residents here, I feel compelled to use all the different social networks to be able to keep up with everyone else. I think most people feel that way.

I would like to change my diet in the future to read more without having to be compelled by midterms and finals. I don’t think that watching and reading news on a computer inhibits my ability to understand it. I would like to spend less time on the computer though. So hopefully in the future I can accomplish that.